FAS Enabled UAV for Energy-Efficient WPCNs

TL;DR

This paper introduces a fluid antenna system (FAS) on UAVs to significantly improve energy efficiency and communication rates in wireless powered communication networks by enabling adaptive antenna port switching.

Contribution

It proposes a novel FAS-enabled UAV scheme that adaptively optimizes antenna location for enhanced channel gain, with analytical expressions and simulation validation.

Findings

Analytical expressions for ergodic spectral rate derived.

FAS on UAVs significantly increases energy efficiency.

Simulation confirms analytical accuracy and performance gains.

Abstract

This letter presents an innovative scheme to enhance the communication rate and energy efficiency (EE) of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) in wireless powered communication networks (WPCNs) by deploying the emerging fluid antenna system (FAS) technology onto the UAV. Our proposed approach leverages the dynamic port switching capability of FAS, enabling the UAV to adaptively select the optimal antenna location that maximizes channel gain for both downlink wireless power transfer (WPT) and uplink wireless data transfer (WDT). We derive both exact analytical expression of the ergodic spectral rate, and asymptotic expression at high signal to noise ratio (SNR) regime under Nakagami-m correlated fading channels. The Mont-Carlo simulation results confirms the accuracy of the analytical expressions and demonstrate the substantial increase in energy efficiency of UAV with FAS compared to fixed antenna systems.