Why and How Lasagna Works: A New Design of Air-Ground Integrated Infrastructure

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) networking emerges as an indispensable communication paradigm for the sixth-generation (6G) communication systems to fulfill ubiquitous coverage and near-instant super-connectivity. To fully exploit the merits of various UAVs, based on software-defined networking (SDN) and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, this article proposes an intelligent air-ground integrated network architecture called Lasagna. It acts as a comprehensive infrastructure that can complement the ground network and support the 6G. It is hierarchically composed of the high-altitude platform, low-altitude platform, and ground platform, to provide ubiquitous intelligent networking, computing, and caching services in a flexible, seamless, and economical manner. From a high-level view, we detail how Lasagna provides smart edge wireless communication, computing, and caching services. We also explore some open research directions and conclude this article.