An efficient throughput-aware resource allocation technique for data transmission in unmanned aircraft systems

Abstract

Unmanned aircraft systems are expected to open pathways towards the development of many new services. Owing to their airborne flexible mobility, systems using unmanned aircraft (UA) have a significant potential to change our daily lives. However, several issues with such systems need to be addressed. In particular, wireless transmission of data such as high quality video from a UA to Ground Stations (GSs) is a major challenge affecting how airborne UAs are controlled. In this paper, we attempt to construct a base model of data transmission from UA to GSs in order to most efficiently use communication resources. To do this, we propose a method to allocate resources for individual UA missions that takes differences in requirements and surroundings into account. In this method, time division multiple access (TDMA)-based resource allocation is performed by anticipating the effective throughput according to the surrounding radio wave propagation environment. The effectiveness of this proposed resource allocation method is evaluated through simulation.