On the Trade-offs between Coverage Radius, Altitude and Beamwidth for Practical UAV Deployments

TL;DR

This paper investigates the complex trade-offs in UAV deployment considering realistic antenna patterns, revealing how coverage, altitude, and beamwidth interact and proposing a new multi-UAV coverage scheme.

Contribution

It introduces a realistic 3D antenna model into UAV deployment analysis and proposes a novel packing scheme for multiple UAV coverage.

Findings

Coverage area sensitivity to antenna beamwidth and height

Trade-offs between UAV design parameters analyzed

A new multi-UAV packing scheme proposed

Abstract

Current studies on Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) based cellular deployment consider UAVs as aerial base stations for air-to-ground communication. However, they analyze UAV coverage radius and altitude interplay while omitting or over-simplifying an important aspect of UAV deployment, i.e., effect of a realistic antenna pattern. This paper addresses the UAV deployment problem while using a realistic 3D directional antenna model. New trade-offs between UAV design space dimensions are revealed and analyzed in different scenarios. The sensitivity of coverage area to both antenna beamwidth and height is compared. The analysis is extended to multiple UAVs and a new packing scheme is proposed for multiple UAVs coverage that offers several advantages compared to prior approaches.