Abstract
In recent years, interest in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as a means to provide wireless connectivity has substantially increased thanks to their easy, fast and flexible deployment. Among the several possible applications of UAV networks explored by the current literature, they can be efficiently employed to collect Internet-of-Things (IoT) data because the non-stringent latency and small-size traffic type is particularly suited for UAVs’ inherent characteristics. However, the implications coming from the implementation of existing technology in such kinds of nodes are not straightforward. In this article, we consider a Narrow Band IoT (NB-IoT) network served by a UAV base station. Because of the many configurations possible within the NB-IoT standard, such as the access structure and numerology, we thoroughly review the technical aspects that have to be implemented and may be affected by the proposed UAV-aided IoT network. For proper remarks, we investigate the network performance jointly in terms of the number of successful transmissions, access rate, latency, throughput and energy consumption. Then, we compare the obtained results on different and known trajectories in the research community and study the impact of varying UAV parameters such as speed and height. Moreover, the numerical assessment allows us to extend the discussion to the potential implications of this model in different scenarios. Thus, this article summarizes all the main aspects that must be considered in planning NB-IoT networks with UAVs.
Highlights
Machine-type communications have witnessed a renewed interest from the scientific community thanks to advancements in technology and the plethora of new applications involving them
3GPP documents and studied in all of its features, including the signaling procedures and the parameters’ implications of the three Narrow Band IoT (NB-IoT) coverage classes; we investigate the performance in terms of number of completely served nodes, achieved network throughput, perceived latency and energy consumption of nodes; we analyze the impact of using different Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) trajectories and the effect of varying
The access rate, Racc ; the percentage of nodes completely served, Ssuc ; the mean latency perceived by nodes, ∆τavg ; the network throughput, Tnet ; the mean energy consumption of NB-IoT nodes, E
Summary
Machine-type communications have witnessed a renewed interest from the scientific community thanks to advancements in technology and the plethora of new applications involving them. The usage of UAVs as mobile BSs is especially suited for massive machine-type communication (mMTC) and IoT links, since IoT nodes are mostly static (do not change their position over time) and their traffic demand is usually predictable [1] The knowledge of these two basic inputs allows to make decisions in advance on the trajectory to follow to maximize IoT service, plan periodical flights when the demand arises, modify the UAV behaviour if needed, and so on. This may be further relevant if these mobile BSs have to direct themselves in remote and different areas where the nodes are placed.
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