3-D Placement of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Base Station (UAV-BS) for Energy-Efficient Maximal Coverage

Unmanned aerial vehicle mounted base stations (UAV-BSs) can provide wireless services in a variety of scenarios. In this letter, we propose an optimal placement algorithm for UAV-BSs that maximizes the number of covered users using the minimum transmit power. We decouple the UAV-BS deployment problem in the vertical and horizontal dimensions without any loss of optimality. Furthermore, we model the UAV-BS deployment in the horizontal dimension as a circle placement problem and a smallest enclosing circle problem. Simulations are conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed method for different spatial distributions of the users.

I. Introduction

Unmanned aerial vehicle mounted base stations (UAV-BSs) have recently gained wide popularity as a possible solution to provide wireless connectivity in a rapid manner. UAV-BSs can assist the terrestrial cellular network in a variety of scenarios. For example, in case of terrestrial BSs failure, UAV-BSs can be rapidly deployed to meet the sudden demand for wireless services [1]–[3]. Clearly, the UAV-BS should be deployed at a location that maximizes the number of covered users.