Software Defined UAV-Based Location Aware Deployment Scheme for Optimal Wireless Coverage

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) networks have developed as an optimistic technique for future wireless coverage in different terrains. The facility of fast deployment and cost effectiveness make UAVs premium choice for Aerial Base Station (ABS) to serve User Equipments (UEs) in defined area. Even more, UAVs Data Relaying System (UDRS) helps to extend the service coverage area to provide reliable communication connection to the isolated UEs. The deployment of UAVs has great influence on the performance ABS and UDRS. The existing solution only optimize the UAVs deployment problem for static users by utilizing Global Positioning System (GPS) signals. Such a deployment of UAVs which relies only on GPS can hinder the performance as these systems are prone to various attacks and can end up in signal blockage. So, to provide secure, fast and seamless communication services, a Software Defined UAV deployment scheme has been designed which is location aware. The proposed scheme employs the minimum number of self-deployed UAVs. The SDN centralized controller helps to maintain all the records of on-going communications in the proposed UAV network. The proposed scheme has been evaluated using various performance metrics and it shows promising results. Moreover, it clearly outperforms the scenario when a conventional network paradigm is used instead of software defined networks.