Joint Trajectory and Resource Allocation Design for UAV Communication Systems

TL;DR

This paper proposes a joint optimization framework for UAV trajectory and resource allocation to maximize communication throughput, considering constraints like no-fly zones and user data rate requirements, using an efficient iterative algorithm.

Contribution

It introduces a novel joint optimization approach for UAV trajectory and resource allocation that handles complex constraints and provides a computationally efficient solution.

Findings

The proposed algorithm achieves throughput close to systems without no-fly zones.

It significantly outperforms benchmark schemes in throughput.

The method effectively balances trajectory planning and resource allocation.

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate resource allocation design for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-enabled communication systems, where a UAV is dispatched to provide communications to multiple user nodes. Our objective is to maximize the communication system throughput by jointly optimizing the subcarrier allocation policy and the trajectory of the UAV, while taking into account the minimum required data rate for each user node, no-fly zones (NFZs), the maximum UAV cruising speed, and initial/final UAV locations. The design is formulated as a mixed integer non-convex optimization problem which is generally intractable. Subsequently, a computationally-efficient iterative algorithm is proposed to obtain a locally optimal solution. Simulation results illustrate that the performance of the proposed iterative algorithm approaches closely to that of the system without NFZ. In addition, the proposed algorithm can achieve a significant throughput gain compared to various benchmark schemes.