QoS-Compliant 3-D Deployment Optimization Strategy for UAV Base Stations

• Published in: IEEE systems journal Vol. 15; no. 2; pp. 1795 - 1803
• Main Authors: Zhong, Xukai, Huo, Yiming, Dong, Xiaodai, Liang, Zhonghua
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.06.2021; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: 3-D deployment; Air-to-ground (A2G); Base stations; Broadcasting; channel models; genetic algorithm (GA); Genetic algorithms; Optimization; Placement; Quality of service; Radio equipment; unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV); Unmanned aerial vehicles; user equipment (UE); User requirements; Wireless communication; Wireless communications
• ISSN: 1932-8184; 1937-9234
• DOI: 10.1109/JSYST.2020.3015428

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are being integrated as an active element in 5G and beyond networks. Because of their flexibility and mobility, UAV base stations (UAV-BSs) can be deployed according to the ground user distributions and their quality-of-service (QoS) requirement. Although there has been quite some prior research on the UAV deployment, no work has studied this problem in a 3-D setting and taken into account the UAV-BS capacity limit and the QoS requirements of ground users. Therefore, in this article, we focus on the problem of deploying UAV-BSs to provide satisfactory wireless communication services, with the aim to maximize the total number of covered user equipment subject to user data-rate requirements and UAV-BSs' capacity limit. First, we model the relationship between the air-to-ground path loss (PL) and the location of UAV-BSs in both horizontal and vertical dimensions, which has not been considered in previous works. Unlike the conventional UAV deployment problem formulation, the 3-D deployment problem is decoupled into a 2-D horizontal placement and altitude determination connected by PL requirement and minimization. Then, we propose a novel genetic algorithm-based 2-D placement approach in which UAV-BSs are placed to have maximum coverage of the users with consideration of data rate distribution. Finally, numerical and simulation results show that the proposed approach has enabled a better coverage percentage comparing with other schemes.