On the Optimal 3D Placement of a UAV Base Station for Maximal Coverage of UAV Users

TL;DR

This paper presents an optimal 3D placement algorithm for UAV-based aerial base stations to maximize coverage of aerial users while considering spectrum sharing policies with terrestrial networks.

Contribution

It introduces a novel optimal 3D placement method for UAV-BSs that accounts for spectrum sharing policies, antenna beamwidth, and user density.

Findings

The algorithm maximizes aerial user coverage under various configurations.

Simulation results demonstrate the impact of spectrum sharing and antenna parameters.

Guidelines for deploying exclusive aerial networks are provided.

Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can be users that support new applications, or be communication access points that serve terrestrial and/or aerial users. In this paper, we focus on the connectivity problem of aerial users when they are exclusively served by aerial base stations (BS), i.e., UAVBSs. Specifically, the 3D placement problem of a directional antenna equipped UAV-BS, aiming to maximize the number of covered aerial users under a spectrum sharing policy with terrestrial networks, is investigated. Given a known spectrum sharing policy between the aerial and terrestrial networks, we propose a 3D placement algorithm that achieves optimality. Simulation results show the performance of our approach, in terms of number of covered aerial users, for different configurations and parameters, such as the spectrum sharing policy, antenna beamwidth, transmit power, and aerial users density. These results represent novel guidelines for exclusive aerial networks deployment and applications, distinctively for orthogonal and non-orthogonal spectrum sharing policies with terrestrial networks.