Energy efficient multi-antenna UAV-enabled mobile relay

Abstract

In this paper, we study an energy efficient multi-antenna unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-enabled half-duplex mobile relaying system under Rician fading channels. By assuming that the UAV follows a circular trajectory at fixed altitude and applying the decode-and-forward relaying strategy, we maximize the energy efficiency by jointly designing beamforming, power allocation, circular radius and flight speed, subject to the sum transmit power constraint on source node and UAV relay node. First, we maximize the end-to-end signal-to-noise ratio by jointly designing beamforming and statistical power allocation. Based on the obtained beamforming and power allocation results, we then obtain a semi closed-form expression of energy efficiency, and finally maximize energy efficiency by optimizing flight speed and circular radius, allowing optimal circular radius to be obtained via numerical computation. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can effectively enhance the system energy efficiency.