Positioning of Flying Base Stations to Optimize Throughput and Energy Consumption of Mobile Devices

Requirements on future mobile networks call for flexible, dynamic, and scalable solutions adopted for communications. Flying Base Stations (FlyBSs) are seen as a promising way for provisioning of a connectivity to user equipments (UEs) in highly dynamic scenarios. In this paper, we focus on a positioning of multiple FlyBSs providing communication services to moving UEs in a scenario with existing deployment of static base stations. Positions of the FlyBSs are adjusted over time as the UEs move considering not only a throughput of the UEs, but also an energy consumption of the UEs. The proposed solution for the positioning of FlyBSs is based on genetic algorithms. We show that the throughput experienced by the mobile users is significantly increased (by up to 260%) by our proposed algorithm comparing to the state of the art solution. At the same time, we demonstrate that the FlyBSs notably reduce the energy consumption of the UEs for communication and the proposed positioning of the FlyBSs even emphasizes this benefit. The developed positioning algorithm converges quickly enough to be applied in real networks. These findings open a space for variety of new applications of the FlyBSs in future energy efficient wireless communication systems.