Optimization of the UAVs Number in Emergency Communications Systems

Abstract

The use of unmanned aerial vehicles with carrying mobile base stations to provide communications in areas of emergency and natural disasters is a promising and novel technology. It allows to reduce the time to deploy a communication network, which is used, among other things, to coordinate the actions of manned and unmanned vehicles used in the emergency area (robots, drones, "connected cars", etc.). However, the use of unmanned aerial vehicles has its limitations, primarily battery life. The work presents the results of modeling a communication system for emergency situations based on unmanned aerial vehicles with optimization of the number of required network elements while ensuring the required communication quality. The influence of clustering methods on the efficiency of the system, as well as its energy efficiency is evaluated. It is shown that the use of clustering algorithms in relation to determining the optimal locations for unmanned aerial vehicles can reduce their number required to provide radio coverage in a given area. This effect can also be interpreted from the point of view of increasing the energy efficiency of the communication network.