  Aerial telecommunications networks based on Low Altitude Platforms (LAPs) are
expected to optimally meet the urgent needs of emergency relief and recovery
operations for tackling large scale natural disasters. The energy efficient
operation of such networks is important given the fact that the entire network
infrastructure including the battery operated ground terminals, exhibit
requirements to operate under power constrained situations. In this paper, we
propose and evaluate a real-time adaptive transmission strategy for dynamic
selection of direct and cooperative links based on the channel conditions for
improved energy efficiency. We show that the cooperation between mobile
terrestrial terminals on the ground could improve the energy efficiency in the
uplink depending on the temporal behavior of the terrestrial and the aerial
uplink channels. The simulation analysis corroborates that the adaptive
transmission technique improves the overall energy efficiency of the network.
