Short-term and Long-term Cell Outage Compensation Using UAVs in 5G Networks

TL;DR

This paper proposes a UAV-based framework for short-term and long-term cell outage compensation in 5G networks, optimizing UAV placement and power to ensure service quality and energy efficiency during base station failures.

Contribution

It introduces a novel framework utilizing UAVs for outage mitigation in 5G, including an optimization model for UAV placement and power management.

Findings

Guarantees minimum quality of service for all users

Minimizes UAV energy consumption during outages

Effective in both short-term and long-term failure scenarios

Abstract

The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) has gained interest in wireless networks for its many uses and advantages such as rapid deployment and multi-purpose functionality. This is why wide deployment of UAVs has the potential to be integrated in the upcoming 5G standard. They can be used as flying base-stations, which can be deployed in case of ground Base-Stations (GBSs) failures. Such failures can be short-term or long-term. Based on the type and duration of the failure, we propose a framework that uses drones or helikites to mitigate GBS failures. Our proposed short-term and long-term cell outage compensation framework aims to mitigate the effect of the failure of any GBS in 5G networks. Within our framework, outage compensation is done with the assistance of sky BSs (UAVs). An optimization problem is formulated to jointly minimize communication power of the UAVs and maximize the minimum rates of the Users' Equipment (UEs) affected by the failure. Also, the optimal placement of the UAVs is determined. Simulation results show that the proposed framework guarantees the minimum quality of service for each UE in addition to minimizing the UAVs' consumed energy.