Optimal 3D trajectory design for UAV-assisted cellular communications in the post-disaster scenarios

Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) assisted wireless communication has been recently proposed as an effective solution to provide wireless connectivity to ground users which can improve the network coverage area and spectral efficiency. In this paper, we consider the post-disaster network scenario where users are isolated from the network infrastructure. We investigate the best positioning of the UAV in terms of the optimal trajectory as well as UAV vertical location to cover as many ground users as possible to improve the spectral efficiency. When the trajectory is optimized, the optimal transmit power within the available power budget is then obtained. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed UAV-enabled wireless communication technique improves the overall spectral and energy efficiency.