Tethered drones outperform 5G towers for users on the urban network edge.

City buildings often block mobile phone signals, making service slow. Researchers studied using tethered drones as flying cellular base stations to fix this. Normal drones run out of battery fast. These tethered drones connect to ground stations with lightweight cables. The cables give them power and hold them steadily in the air. Flying high gives drones a direct line of sight to people on the ground below. Using computer simulations of a dense city, the researchers tested the drones at heights from 100 to 1000 m. They found that flying base stations can beat normal ground-based 5G networks in user download speeds. People with the worst reception saw the biggest improvements, as long as operators pick the right flying height.

Why it matters

In dense cities, 5G signals often weaken near building edges or in shadowed areas. This paper shows that base stations mounted on tethered drones can deliver much higher speeds to those users, potentially transforming connectivity in urban centers where traditional towers fall short. For cell-edge users—people at the fringes of coverage—the gains are largest, meaning fewer dropped connections and faster data in crowded spaces.

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