High Throughput Data Relay in UAV Wireless Networks

Fenyu Jiang,Chris Phillips

doi:10.3390/fi12110193

Abstract

As a result of their high mobility and reduced cost, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been found to be a promising tool in wireless networks. A UAV can perform the role of a base station as well as a mobile relay, connecting distant ground terminals. In this paper, we dispatch a UAV to a disaster area to help relay information for victims. We involve a bandwidth efficient technique called the Dual-Sampling (DS) method when planning the UAV flight trajectory, trying to maximize the data transmission throughput. We propose an iterative algorithm for solving this problem. The victim bandwidth scheduling and the UAV trajectory are alternately optimized in each iteration, meanwhile a power balance mechanism is implemented in the algorithm to ensure the proper functioning of the DS method. We compare the results of the DS-enabled scheme with two non-DS schemes, namely a fair bandwidth allocation scheme and a bandwidth contention scheme. The DS scheme outperforms the other two non-DS schemes regarding max-min average data rate among all the ground victims. Furthermore, we derive the theoretical optimal performance of the DS scheme for a given scenario, and find that the proposed approach can be regarded as a general method to solve this optimization problem. We also observe that the optimal UAV trajectory for the DS scheme is quite different from that of the non-DS bandwidth contention scheme.

Highlights

Due to the advantages of high mobility and reduced cost, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have found promising applications in wireless communication systems [1,2], to support the existing cellular networks in high-demand and overload situations, and to provide wireless connectivity in scenarios lacking infrastructure such as battlefields or disaster zones
The role that a UAV performs in a wireless communication system typically follows either of two types—firstly, the UAV can be deployed as an aerial Base Station (BS) for the ground terminals [5]; secondly, the UAV can be deployed as a mobile relay providing wireless connectivity between distant ground terminals [6,7,8]
In order to solve the problem, we propose an iterative algorithm which alternately optimizes the victim bandwidth scheduling and UAV trajectory

Summary

Introduction

Due to the advantages of high mobility and reduced cost, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have found promising applications in wireless communication systems [1,2], to support the existing cellular networks in high-demand and overload situations, and to provide wireless connectivity in scenarios lacking infrastructure such as battlefields or disaster zones. The role that a UAV performs in a wireless communication system typically follows either of two types—firstly, the UAV can be deployed as an aerial Base Station (BS) for the ground terminals [5]; secondly, the UAV can be deployed as a mobile relay providing wireless connectivity between distant ground terminals [6,7,8]. The relay often plays an important role in wireless communications [9,10,11]

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Conclusion