SkyCell: A Prototyping Platform for 5G Aerial Base Stations

In this paper we propose SkyCell, a prototyping platform for 5G autonomous aerial base stations. While the majority of work on the topic focuses on theoretical and rarely implemented solutions, SkyCell practically demonstrates the feasibility of an aerial base station where wireless backhaul, autonomous mobility and 5G functionalities are integrated within a unified framework. We showcase the advantages of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for 5G applications, discuss the design challenges, and ultimately propose a prototyping framework to develop aerial cellular base stations. Experimental results demonstrate that SkyCell not only supports heterogeneous data traffic demand and services, but also enables the implementation of autonomous flight control algorithms while improving metrics such as network throughput (up to 35%) and user fairness (up to 39%).