The Effect of HAPS Unstable Movement on Handover Performance

The high-altitude platform station (HAPS) communication system has its unique advantages such as flexible deployment and large coverage. It can be widely used in a variety of communication scenarios in the future and has attracted the attention of researchers from various countries. Under the influence of stratospheric wind, HAPS will inevitably move within a certain range. In this paper, we discuss vertical movement and swing movement, which are affected by path loss. First, we establish a more realistic ground coverage model and derive its calculation formulas. Then, based on this model, we analyze the coverage and calculate the handover probability of two movement modes. Finally, extensive simulations are implanted to verify our analyses. The results show that the HAPS coverage area is mainly affected by the path loss. Moreover, the swing movement has greater influence on the handover probability than the vertical movement.