Papers for
telecommunications planners
Papers whose findings have a practical use for this group, as judged from the abstract. Open a paper to read what it means in practice.
Education gap smaller in generative AI use than early internet use
Is the education gap in generative AI use smaller than the internet's was at a similar level of use? Evidence from 16 European countries
Abstract: New technologies are usually adopted first by people with more formal education. This paper asks whether the education gap in generative AI use in 2025 is smaller or larger than the internet's gap in the same country in the year when overall internet use was at a similar level. It uses public Eurostat survey data on ICT usage by individuals aged 16 to 74. Each country's 2025 rate of generative AI use in the last three months is matched to the internet year whose overall last-three-months use was closest, within 5 percentage points, and the gap between people with high (ISCED 5 to 8) and low (ISCED 0 to 2) completed education is measured as a log ratio and as a percentage-point difference. Sixteen of 35 countries could be matched; most of the others were early internet adopters. In the matched countries, the generative AI gap was smaller in 13 of 16 countries on the log ratio (median change -0.625, 95% bootstrap interval -0.969 to -0.291, two-sided sign test p = 0.021) and in 15 of 16 on the percentage-point gap (median change -27.6 points, interval -32.2 to -16.8, p = 0.0005). The point-gap result keeps its sign in every generative-AI-versus-internet sensitivity analysis with 8 or more countries, including comparisons restricted on both sides to ages 25 to 54 and 55 to 74, but its size is sensitive to matching that takes education composition into account (about -10 to -11 points in 7 and 8 countries). The ratio result is fragile: it fails the decision rule when countries matched at their first internet observation are removed (9 of 11, p = 0.065). The analysis follows an unpublished plan whose timing cannot be verified, so it is not presented as pre-registered. The results describe unadjusted education contrasts in a non-random set of countries, not an education effect, and do not generalise to the EU as a whole.
HAPS with intelligent surfaces outperform relays for 6G communication
HAPS-RIS or HAPS-Relay: Which Outperforms Under Impairments with NOMA in 6G NTN?
Abstract: This paper investigates the performance of high-altitude platform station (HAPS)-assisted communication systems employing either reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) or relay stations (RS) under non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) scheme. Practical system impairments, including hardware impairments (HWI) and imperfect channel state information (CSI), are explicitly considered. The results show that HAPS-RIS outperforms HAPS-RS in terms of both sum-rate and energy efficiency under non-ideal conditions due to its passive nature, which avoids noise amplification. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that RIS element allocation and user spatial distribution significantly impact NOMA performance, where increased user separation and proper allocation enhance channel disparity and improve system efficiency. Despite its higher sensitivity to imperfect CSI, HAPS-RIS can effectively compensate for performance degradation through large-scale RIS element deployment, maintaining a performance advantage over half-duplex RS-based systems. These insights provide useful design guidelines for impairment-aware HAPS-assisted 6G communication systems.