A Wideband Non-Stationary 3D GBSM for HAP-MIMO Communication Systems at Millimeter-Wave Bands

High-altitude platforms (HAPs) are considered to be the most important equipment for next-generation wireless communication technologies. In this paper, we investigate the channel characteristics under the configurations of massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) space and large bandwidth at millimeter-wave (mmWave) bands, along with the moving essence of the HAP and ground terminals. A non-stationary three-dimensional (3D) geometry-based stochastic model (GBSM) is proposed for a HAP communication system. We use a cylinder-based geometric modeling method to construct the channel and derive the channel impulse response (CIR). Additionally, the birth–death process of the scatterers is enclosed using the Markov process. Large-scale parameters such as free space loss and rainfall attenuation are also taken into consideration. Due to the relative motion between HAP and ground terminals, the massive MIMO space, and the wide bandwidth in the mmWave band, the channel characteristics of HAP exhibit non-stationarities in time, space, and frequency domains. By deriving the temporal auto-correlation function (ACF), we explore the non-stationarity in the time domain and the impact of various parameters on the correlations across the HAP-MIMO channels. The spatial cross-correlation function (CCF) for massive MIMO scenarios, and the frequency correlation function (FCF) in the mmWave bands are also considered. Moreover, we conduct simulation research using MATLAB. Simulation results show that the theoretical results align well with the simulation results, and this highlights the fact that the constructed 3D GBSM can characterize the non-stationary characteristics of HAP-MIMO channels across the time, space, and frequency domains.