SCOPE: Deterministic and Training-Free 3D UAV Deployment via Perimeter-based Heuristics

TL;DR

SCOPE is a deterministic, training-free 3D UAV deployment method that dynamically optimizes coverage using perimeter-based heuristics, ensuring high user satisfaction and real-time performance in unpredictable environments.

Contribution

This work introduces SCOPE, a novel perimeter-based heuristic framework with proven convergence and polynomial complexity, outperforming DRL methods in real-time UAV deployment scenarios.

Findings

Achieves 82-88% user satisfaction rate in simulations.

Maintains 40% coverage at 60m altitude, outperforming baselines.

Generates solutions within milliseconds on standard hardware.

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) mounted Base Stations (UAV-BSs) provide flexible coverage for temporary hotspot scenarios; however, efficiently optimizing 3D deployment to satisfy heterogeneous user distributions remains a significant challenge. While Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) approaches have shown promise, they often suffer from prohibitive training overhead and poor generalization in cold-start scenarios where the user topology is unknown a priori. To address these limitations, this paper proposes Satisfaction-driven Coverage Optimization via Perimeter Extraction (SCOPE), which is a deterministic and training-free 3D deployment framework. Unlike existing heuristics that rely on fixed-altitude assumptions, SCOPE integrates a perimeter-based peeling strategy with the Welzl Smallest Enclosing Circle (SEC) algorithm to dynamically optimize 3D positions. Theoretically, we provide a rigorous convergence proof and derive a polynomial time complexity of $O(N^2 \log N)$, ensuring predictable execution for real-time applications. Experimentally, we evaluate SCOPE in unpredictable hotspot environments against both traditional heuristics and state-of-the-art DRL baselines under a matched hardware budget. Simulation results demonstrate that SCOPE maintains a high user satisfaction rate between 82% and 88% while generating solutions within millisecond-level latency on commodity hardware. Furthermore, SCOPE demonstrates exceptional resilience by maintaining an approximate 40% functional coverage rate at a minimum altitude constraint of 60 m; in this challenging regime, baseline methods suffer a significant performance degradation, dropping to approximately 20% due to altitude-induced path loss. These findings validate SCOPE as a robust and agile solution for establishing instantaneous digital lifelines in zero-day disaster response missions.