Sum-rate maximization for UAV-enabled two-way relay systems

Abstract

In this paper, an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)-enabled two-way relay system with Physical-layer Network Coding (PNC) protocol is considered. A rotary-wing UAV is applied as a mobile relay to assist two ground terminals for information interaction. Our goal is to maximize the sum-rate of the two-way relay system subject to mobility constraints, propulsion power consumption constraints, and transmit power constraints. The formulated problem is not easy to solve directly because it is a mixed integer non-convex optimization problem. Therefore, we decompose it into three sub-problems, and use the mutation arithmetic of the Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Successive Convex Approximation (SCA) to dispose. Besides, a high-efficiency iterative algorithm is proposed to obtain a locally optimal solution by jointly optimizing the time slot pairing, the transmit power allocation, and the UAV trajectory design. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed design achieves significant gains over the benchmark designs.