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This paper studies an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-enabled multicasting system, where a UAV is dispatched to disseminate a common file to a number of geographically distributed ground terminals (GTs). Our objective is to design the UAV trajectory to minimize its mission completion time, while ensuring that each GT is able to successfully recover the file with a high probability required. We consider the use of practical random linear network coding (RLNC) for UAV multicasting, so that each GT is able to recover the file as long as it receives a sufficiently large number of coded packets. However, the formulated UAV trajectory optimization problem is non-convex and difficult to be directly solved. To tackle this issue, we first derive an analytical lower bound for the success probability of each GTs file recovery. Based on this result, we then reformulate the problem into a more tractable form, where the UAV trajectory only needs to be designed to meet a set of constraints each on the minimum connection time with a GT, during which their distance is below a designed threshold. We show that the optimal UAV trajectory only needs to constitute connected line segments, thus it can be obtained by determining first the optimal set of waypoints and then UAV speed along the lines connecting the waypoints. We propose practical schemes for the waypoints design based on a novel concept of virtual base station (VBS) placement and by applying convex optimization techniques. Furthermore, for given set of waypoints, we obtain the optimal UAV speed over the resulting path efficiently by solving a linear programming (LP) problem. Numerical results show that the proposed UAV-enabled multicasting with optimized trajectory design achieves significant performance gains as compared to benchmark schemes.
In this paper, we study a cellular-enabled unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communication system consisting of one UAV and multiple ground base stations (GBSs). The UAV has a mission of flying from an initial location to a final location, during which it needs to maintain reliable wireless connection with the cellular network by associating with one of the GBSs at each time instant. We aim to minimize the UAV mission completion time by optimizing its trajectory, subject to a quality of connectivity constraint of the GBS-UAV link specified by a minimum received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) target, which needs to be satisfied throughout the mission. This problem is non-convex and difficult to be optimally solved. We first propose an effective approach to check its feasibility based on graph connectivity verification. Then, by examining the GBS-UAV association sequence during the UAV mission, we obtain useful insights on the optimal UAV trajectory, based on which an efficient algorithm is proposed to find an approximate solution to the trajectory optimization problem by leveraging techniques in convex optimization and graph theory. Numerical results show that our proposed trajectory design achieves near-optimal performance.
This paper studies an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-enabled multiple access channel (MAC), in which multiple ground users transmit individual messages to a mobile UAV in the sky. We consider a linear topology scenario, where these users locate in a straight line and the UAV flies at a fixed altitude above the line connecting them. Under this setup, we jointly optimize the one-dimensional (1D) UAV trajectory and wireless resource allocation to reveal the fundamental rate limits of the UAV-enabled MAC, under the users individual maximum power constraints and the UAVs maximum flight speed constraints. First, we consider the capacity-achieving non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) transmission with successive interference cancellation (SIC) at the UAV receiver. In this case, we characterize the capacity region by maximizing the average sum-rate of users subject to rate profile constraints. To optimally solve this highly non-convex problem, we transform the original speed-constrained trajectory optimization problem into a speed-free problem that is optimally solvable via the Lagrange dual decomposition. It is rigorously proved that the optimal 1D trajectory solution follows the successive hover-and-fly (SHF) structure. Next, we consider two orthogonal multiple access (OMA) transmission schemes, i.e., frequency-division multiple access (FDMA) and time-division multiple access (TDMA). We maximize the achievable rate regions in the two cases by jointly optimizing the 1D trajectory design and wireless resource (frequency/time) allocation. It is shown that the optimal trajectory solutions still follow the SHF structure but with different hovering locations. Finally, numerical results show that the proposed optimal trajectory designs achieve considerable rate gains over other benchmark schemes, and the capacity region achieved by NOMA significantly outperforms the rate regions by FDMA and TDMA.
In this work, we address the trajectory optimization of a fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) using free space optical communication (FSOC). Here, we focus on maximizing the flight time of the UAV by considering practical constraints for wireless UAV communication, including limited propulsion energy and required data rates. We find optimized trajectories in various atmospheric environments (e.g., moderate-fog and heavy-fog conditions), while also considering the channel characteristics of FSOC. In addition to maximizing the flight time, we consider the energy efficiency maximization and operation-time minimization problem to find the suboptimal solutions required to meet those constraints. Furthermore, we introduce a low-complexity approach to the proposed framework. In order to address the optimization problem, we conduct a bisection method and sequential programming and introduce a new feasibility check algorithm. Although our design considers suboptimal solutions owing to the nonconvexity of the problems, our simulations indicate that the proposed scheme exhibits a gain of approximately 44.12% in terms of service time when compared to the conventional scheme.
Wireless communication with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is a promising technology for future communication systems. In this paper, we study energy-efficient UAV communication with a ground terminal via optimizing the UAVs trajectory, a new design paradigm that jointly considers both the communication throughput and the UAVs energy consumption. To this end, we first derive a theoretical model on the propulsion energy consumption of fixed-wing UAVs as a function of the UAVs flying speed, direction and acceleration, based on which the energy efficiency of UAV communication is defined. Then, for the case of unconstrained trajectory optimization, we show that both the rate-maximization and energy-minimization designs lead to vanishing energy efficiency and thus are energy-inefficient in general. Next, we introduce a practical circular UAV trajectory, under which the UAVs flight radius and speed are optimized to maximize the energy efficiency for communication. Furthermore, an efficient design is proposed for maximizing the UAVs energy efficiency with general constraints on its trajectory, including its initial/final locations and velocities, as well as maximum speed and acceleration. Numerical results show that the proposed designs achieve significantly higher energy efficiency for UAV communication as compared with other benchmark schemes.
Integrating the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) into the cellular network is envisioned to be a promising technology to significantly enhance the communication performance of both UAVs and existing terrestrial users. In this paper, we first provide an overview on the two main paradigms in cellular UAV communications, i.e., cellular-enabled UAV communication with UAVs as new aerial users served by the ground base stations (GBSs), and UAV-assisted cellular communication with UAVs as new aerial communication platforms serving the terrestrial users. Then, we focus on the former paradigm and study a new UAV trajectory design problem subject to practical communication connectivity constraints with the GBSs. Specifically, we consider a cellular-connected UAV in the mission of flying from an initial location to a final location, during which it needs to maintain reliable communication with the cellular network by associating with one GBS at each time instant. We aim to minimize the UAVs mission completion time by optimizing its trajectory, subject to a quality-of-connectivity constraint of the GBS-UAV link specified by a minimum receive signal-to-noise ratio target. To tackle this challenging non-convex problem, we first propose a graph connectivity based method to verify its feasibility. Next, by examining the GBS-UAV association sequence over time, we obtain useful structural results on the optimal UAV trajectory, based on which two efficient methods are proposed to find high-quality approximate trajectory solutions by leveraging graph theory and convex optimization techniques. The proposed methods are analytically shown to be capable of achieving a flexible trade-off between complexity and performance, and yielding a solution that is arbitrarily close to the optimal solution in polynomial time. Finally, we make concluding remarks and point out some promising directions for future work.