Airborne and Ground-Based NIBs for On-Demand Coverage With User Disparity and SWIPT

In emergency scenarios with incapacitated (compromised/ absent) fixed communication infrastructure, ensuring reliable on-demand and dynamic network coverage becomes critical for rapid and effective disaster management. This paper proposes a novel framework for deploying network-in-a-box (NIB) solution using a hybrid model that integrates ground-based NIBs for accessible areas and airborne NIBs for restricted areas. We adopt priority-based non-orthogonal multiple access (PB-NOMA) for the multi-user multi-antenna downlink/uplink (DL/UL) communications between NIBs and single-antenna ground users. We further employ simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) for the priority user (PUs) to replenish their device batteries for continued operation while transferring wireless information to the general users (GUs). Our proposed approach addresses the key challenges such as terrain-aware rapid deployment, dynamic resource allocation, complete/partial power outages, and seamless connectivity with the aim to maximize the generalized global energy efficiency (GGEE). Our simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the adopted system to provide robust on-demand communications while dynamically adapting to user traffic demands, environmental constraints, and emergency scenarios with up to 60%, 33%, 100%, and 35% improvement in average GGEE, spectral efficiency, energy efficiency, and throughput, respectively.