A Primer on HIBS -- High Altitude Platform Stations as IMT Base Stations

Abstract

Mobile communication via high-altitude platforms operating in the stratosphere is an idea that has been on the table for decades. In the past few years, however, with recent advances in technology and parallel progress in standardization and regulatory bodies like 3GPP and ITU, these ideas have gained considerable momentum. In this article, we present a comprehensive overview of HIBS - High Altitude Platform Stations as IMT Base Stations. We lay out possible use cases and summarize the current status of the development, from a technological point of view as well as from standardization in 3GPP, and regarding spectrum aspects. We then present preliminary system level simulation results to shed light on the performance of HIBS. We conclude with pointing out several directions for future research.