Power Control in UAV-Supported Ultra Dense Networks: Communications, Caching, and Energy Transfer

TL;DR

This paper explores the integration of UAVs into ultra dense networks, focusing on power control, applications in communications, caching, energy transfer, and demonstrating performance benefits over traditional networks.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of UAV-supported UDN scenarios, discusses power control strategies, and compares performance with traditional networks through case studies.

Findings

UAV-supported UDNs outperform traditional fixed infrastructure networks in simulations.

Four key application scenarios demonstrate UAVs' versatility in UDNs.

Effective power control is crucial for UAV-supported UDN performance.

Abstract

By means of network densification, ultra dense networks (UDNs) can efficiently broaden the network coverage and enhance the system throughput. In parallel, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) communications and networking have attracted increasing attention recently due to their high agility and numerous applications. In this article, we present a vision of UAV-supported UDNs. Firstly, we present four representative scenarios to show the broad applications of UAV-supported UDNs in communications, caching and energy transfer. Then, we highlight the efficient power control in UAV-supported UDNs by discussing the main design considerations and methods in a comprehensive manner. Furthermore, we demonstrate the performance superiority of UAV-supported UDNs via case study simulations, compared to traditional fixed infrastructure based networks. In addition, we discuss the dominating technical challenges and open issues ahead.