Optimal beamforming and deployment of millimeter-wave drone base stations

Abstract

Due to their flexible deployment and line-of-sight channel conditions, using drones as base stations is a promising technology. Recent developments in Massive MIMO transmission with millimeter-wave beamforming also enables high data rates and enables simultaneous transmission to multiple ground users. In this work we consider the problem of deployment (i.e. positioning) of drone base stations for maximizing proportional fairness, along with analog MIMO beamforming that maximizes the Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio (SINR). Simulation results reveal that careful K-means clustering of ground users and altitude adjustment performs close to a Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO)-based solution. Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) codebook-based low-complexity beamforming also provides a promising performance, when compared to the Semi-Definite Programming (SDP)-based solution, as the number of antennas is increased.