Multi-UAV Base Station Deployment Maximizing Coverage Density and Network Endurance

Base stations based on unmanned aerial vehicles are one of the promising solutions to the coverage, high data rate, reliability, and low latency issues of the 5G and beyond networks. In this paper, unlike the common literature, we investigate an energy-aware 3D deployment strategy that maximizes the network coverage and endurance in a given geographical area under realistic flight dynamics constraints. First, the power consumption of a drone during hovering is obtained by using the momentum and blade element theory as a function of both the height and weight of the platform. Then, we formulate a communication problem which ensures to avoid the overlap of the coverage areas of the UAV base stations, so that intercell interference can be eliminated. Moreover, the radius of the coverage area is restricted by a certain amount due to flight time considerations. In the numerical results, the effects of city altitude, the number of UAVs and the size of the desired area on the coverage density and the network endurance are examined.