Energy-Efficiency Framework for Fixed-Wing UAV Communications With Variable Altitude

The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) has recently appeared as a good candidate for providing wireless network connectivity, with several advantages over traditional ground infrastructure. With the addition of on-board energy harvesting, such platforms have the potential for perpetual-endurance flight and wireless connectivity. Yet, UAV modeling, especially with respect to this combination of capabilities, is not well-understood. In this paper, we demonstrate a framework for analyzing the energy balance of simplified trajectories in three dimensions for fixed-wing aircraft with on-board solar energy harvesting, as well as integrating the trajectory into the NS3 simulator to evaluate network performance. This framework is applied to a small number of trajectory designs, showing that benefits may exist for non-circle trajectories, as well as some advantages and disadvantages of using altitude to conserve additional energy.