Seamless connectivity with 5G enabled unmanned aerial vehicles base stations using machine programming approach

Abstract

AbstractDeployment of a small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) mounted 5G base station is a promising solution for providing seamless network connectivity to users in a modern, data‐centric thrust areas. The key challenge is to find the location, the height and the optimum number of mounts. A machine programming based approach is proposed here for optimal placement of UAV‐mounted base station. The location of the deployment is determined using three clustering algorithms such as K‐means, K‐medoids, and fuzzy cluster means. Different sets of UAV‐mounted base stations have been deployed with variable user density at different heights. The impact on the network performance has been quantified through measurements of received power, signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR), and path loss per active user equipment (UEs). To gain further insights, a scenario where UEs are connected only to the terrestrial base station, that is, the network is devoid of any sort of UAV mounted base station is evaluated. Numerical computations reaffirm that the proposed technique reduces the average path loss of the active UEs. Moreover, the use of height‐mounted base station also alleviates the issues arising due to low SINR values. The said technique shows immense potential in terms of seamless connectivity to end users in events of emergency and remote deployment scenarios, where ground‐based base station is not possible. The big transition of on‐ demand connectivity for 5G networks shall be benefitted from purpose‐built UAV infrastructure with specific locations or areas in mind.