HAPS-RIS-assisted IoT Networks for Disaster Recovery and Emergency Response: Architecture, Application Scenarios, and Open Challenges

2026-03-17

AI Summary

This study addresses the challenge of terrestrial communication outages during large-scale natural disasters by proposing an emergency Internet-of-Things (IoT) communication architecture jointly assisted by High-Altitude Platform Stations (HAPS) and a dynamically reconfigurable active Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface (RIS) with tunable sub-connected amplifier units. The system aggregates sensor data via short-range links and leverages the HAPS–RIS link for efficient backhaul to restore connectivity in affected areas. The proposed active RIS incorporates a switching mechanism that flexibly adjusts the number of powered amplifier-connected elements, effectively mitigating the double-path loss inherent in conventional passive RIS systems. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach significantly enhances both uplink and downlink data rates as well as overall energy efficiency compared to passive RIS counterparts; specifically, every 1 dB increase in ground station transmit power yields an approximate 20–30 Mbps improvement in gateway data rate.

Technology Category

• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Optimization of Spatio-temporal Systems
• Application Domains: Internet of Things, Sensor Networks & Smart Cities
• Multiagent Systems: Agent Communication

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Energy management for devices in mobile Web and WoT environments
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Efficiency and scalability of Web search engines
• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Efficient manipulation of static and dynamic Web-related graphs

Abstract

Reliable and resilient communication is essential for disaster recovery and emergency response, yet terrestrial infrastructure often fails during large-scale natural disasters. This paper proposes a High-Altitude Platform Station (HAPS) and Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS)-assisted Internet of Things (IoT) communication system to restore connectivity in disaster-affected areas. Distributed IoT sensors collect critical environmental data and forward it to nearby gateways via short-range links, while the HAPS-RIS system provides backhaul to these gateways. To overcome the severe double path loss of passive RIS at high altitudes, we propose a dynamically adjustable sub-connected active RIS architecture that can reconfigure the number of elements connected to each power amplifier through switching mechanisms. Simulation results demonstrate substantial gains in downlink and uplink data rates, as well as system energy efficiency, compared with conventional passive RIS schemes. Moreover, a 1 dB increase in ground-station transmit power yields approximately 20-30 Mbps improvement in gateway data rates. These findings confirm that HAPS-RIS technology offers an effective and energy-efficient approach for resilient IoT backhaul in 6G non-terrestrial networks, particularly in line-of-sight (LoS)-dominant HAPS-ground backhaul scenarios.

Problem

• disaster recovery
• emergency response
• IoT networks
• non-terrestrial networks
• communication resilience

Innovation

• HAPS
• Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces
• active RIS
• IoT backhaul
• disaster recovery