Flight time minimization of UAV for cooperative data collection in probabilistic LoS channel

Abstract

This paper investigates the data collection in an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-aided Internet of Things (IoT) network, where a UAV is dispatched to collect data from ground sensors in a practical and accurate probabilistic line-of-sight (LoS) channel. Especially, access points (APs) are introduced to collect data from some sensors in the unlicensed band to improve data collection efficiency. We formulate a mixed-integer non-convex optimization problem to minimize the UAV flight time by jointly designing the UAV 3D trajectory and sensors' scheduling, while ensuring the required amount of data can be collected under the limited UAV energy. To solve this nonconvex problem, we recast the objective problem into a tractable form. Then, the problem is further divided into several sub-problems to solve iteratively, and the successive convex approximation (SCA) scheme is applied to solve each non-convex subproblem. Finally, the bisection search is adopted to speed up the searching for the minimum UAV flight time. Simulation results verify that the UAV flight time can be shortened by the proposed method effectively.