Improved Sparrow Search Algorithm Enabled Multi-UAV Optimal 3D Deployment in Emergency Communications

With the development of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technologies, UAVs have been pervasively deployed as mobile base stations in emergency communications scenarios. However, due to the limited power supply and communication capability, the optimal 3D deployment of UAVs remains a critical problem. To address the related issues, an improved sparrow search algorithm (ISSA) is proposed in this paper for the optimal 3D deployment of multiple UAVs. Specifically, the deployment of multiple UAVs in the emergency communication scenario is formulated as an optimization problem first, where the coverage rate is optimized by considering the limitations of UAVs’ communication and moving capabilities. Subsequently, the ISSA is developed with a chaotic strategy and a Cauchy-Gaussian mutation strategy to solve the problem. Simulations have been conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed ISSA, where the classical swarm intelligence optimization algorithms in the literature are considered as benchmarks. Simulation results reveal that the ISSA outperforms the benchmark algorithms on the convergence rate and coverage rate.