Altitude and number optimisation for UAV‐enabled wireless communications
Authors: 
Jun Zhang, Ting Zhang, Zheng Yang, Bin Li, Yi WuAuthors Info & Claims
Abstract
This study considers a downlink power consumption problem for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)‐assisted wireless communications, in which UAVs are used as aerial base stations to provide service for the ground users and equipped with a directional antenna of fixed beamwidth. Moreover, the on‐board circuit power of UAV is taking into consideration. The authors derive a closed‐form expression for the optimal flying altitude and number of UAVs by minimising the total power consumption under the users' rate requirements in the given coverage area. The numerical simulation and theoretical results show that the optimal flying altitude of UAVs depends on the beamwidth of the directional antenna at UAVs, the on‐board circuit power of UAVs, and the rate constraint of each user.
References
[1]
Zeng Y., Zhang R., Lim T.J.: ‘Wireless communications with unmanned aerial vehicles: opportunities and challenges’, IEEE Commun. Mag., 2016, 54, (5), pp. 36–42
[2]
Mozaffari M., Saad W., Bennis M.: ‘Unmanned aerial vehicle with underlaid device‐to‐device communications: performance and tradeoffs’, IEEE Trans. Wirel. Commun., 2016, 15, (6), pp. 3949–3963
[3]
Bor‐Yaliniz R.I., El‐Keyi A., Yanikomeroglu H.: ‘Efficient 3‐d placement of an aerial base station in next generation cellular networks’, Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. on Communications (ICC), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 2016, pp. 1–5
[4]
Zeng Y., Zhang R.: ‘Energy‐efficient UAV communication with trajectory optimization’, IEEE Trans. Wirel. Commun., 2017, 16, (6), pp. 3747–3760
[5]
Orfanus D., De‐Freitas E., Eliassen F.: ‘Self‐organization as a supporting paradigm for military UAV relay networks’, IEEE Commun. Lett., 2016, 20, (4), pp. 804–807
[6]
Lyu J., Zeng Y., Zhang R.: ‘Cyclical multiple access in UAV‐aided communications: a throughput‐delay tradeoff’, IEEE Wirel. Commun. Lett., 2016, 5, (6), pp. 600–603
[7]
Mozaffari M., Saad W., Bennis M. et al.: ‘Efficient deployment of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles for optimal wireless coverage’, IEEE Commun. Lett., 2016, 20, (8), pp. 1647–1650
[8]
Zhou T., Huang Y., Yang L.: ‘Energy‐efficient user association in downlink heterogeneous cellular networks’, IET Commun., 2016, 10, (13), pp. 1553–1561
[9]
He H., Zhang S., Zeng Y. et al.: ‘Joint altitude and beamwidth optimization for UAV‐enabled multiuser communications’, IEEE Commun. Lett., 2018, 22, (2), pp. 344–347
[10]
Mozaffari M., Saad W., Bennis M. et al.: ‘Drone small cells in the clouds: design, deployment, and performance analysis’. Proc. IEEE Global Communications Conf., San Diego, USA, December 2015, pp. 1–6
[11]
Al‐Hourani A., Kandeepan S., Lardner S.: ‘Optimal LAP altitude for maximum coverage’, IEEE Wirel. Commun. Lett., 2014, 3, (6), pp. 569–572
[12]
Yang Z., Pan C., Shikh‐Bahaei M. et al.: ‘Joint altitude, beamwidth, location and bandwidth optimization for UAV‐enabled communications’, IEEE Commun. Lett., 2018, 22, (8), pp. 1716–1719
[13]
Lyu J., Zeng Y., Zhang R. et al.: ‘Placement optimization of UAV‐mounted mobile base stations’, IEEE Commun. Lett., 2017, 21, (3), pp. 604–607
[14]
Al‐Hourani A., Kandeepan S., Jamalipour A.: ‘Modeling air‐to‐ground path loss for low altitude platforms in urban environments’. Proc. IEEE Global Communications Conf., Austin, USA, December 2014, pp. 2898–2904
[15]
Feng Q., Mcgeehan J., Tameh E. et al.: ‘Path loss models for air‐to‐ground radio channels in urban environments’. Proc. IEEE Vehicular Technology Conf., Melbourne, Australia, May 2006, pp. 2901–2905
[16]
Mozaffari M., Saad W., Bennis M. et al.: ‘Optimal transport theory for cell association in UAV‐enabled cellular networks’, IEEE Commun. Lett., 2017, 21, (9), pp. 2053–2056
[17]
Mozaffari M., Saad W., Bennis M. et al.: ‘Wireless communication using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs): optimal transport theory for hover time optimization’, IEEE Trans. Wirel. Commun., 2017, 16, (12), pp. 8052–8066
[18]
Jia S., Zhang L.: ‘Modelling unmanned aerial vehicles base station in ground‐to‐air cooperative networks’, IET Commun., 2017, 11, (8), pp. 1187–1194
[19]
Mozaffari M., Saad W., Bennis M. et al.: ‘Optimal transport theory for power‐efficient deployment of unmanned aerial vehicles’. Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. on Communications (ICC), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 2016, pp. 1–6
[20]
Balanis C.A.: ‘Antenna theory: analysis and design’ (Wiley, Hoboken, NJ, USA, 2016, 4th edn.)
[21]
Sboui L., Rezki Z., Alouini M.: ‘Energy‐efficient power allocation for underlay cognitive radio systems’, IEEE Trans. Cognitive Commun. Netw., 2015, 1, (3), pp. 273–283
[22]
Sboui L., Ghazzai H., Rezki Z. et al.: ‘Energy‐efficient power allocation for UAV cognitive radio systems’. Proc. IEEE Vehicular Technology Conf., Toronto, Canada, September 2017
Recommendations
Placement optimisation method for multi‐UAV relay communication
With the popularisation of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology, relay communication based on multi‐UAVs has advantages and application prospects. However, determining the location of UAV relay nodes is a fundamental problem. In particular, when ...
Energy‐efficient optimisation for UAV‐aided wireless sensor networks
This study investigates a novel unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)‐based wireless sensor network, where the UAV acts as a flying base station to serve multiple wireless sensor nodes (SNs). The authors goal is to maximise the system energy efficiency of the ...
Survey of UAV motion planning
Motion planning is a vital module for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), especially in scenarios of autonomous navigation and operation. This survey delivers some recent state‐of‐the‐art UAV motion planning algorithms and related applications. The logic ...
Comments
Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.Information & Contributors
Information
Published In
© 2021 The Institution of Engineering and Technology.
Publisher
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
United States
Publication History
Published: 01 May 2020
Author Tags
Author Tags
Qualifiers
- Research-article
Contributors
Other Metrics
Bibliometrics & Citations
Bibliometrics
Article Metrics
- 0Total Citations
- 0Total Downloads
- Downloads (Last 12 months)0
- Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0
Reflects downloads up to 03 Jan 2025