Real-Time Optimal Resource Allocation for Embedded UAV Communication Systems

We consider device-to-device (D2D) wireless information and power transfer systems using an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) as a relay-assisted node. As the energy capacity and flight time of UAVs is limited, a significant issue in deploying UAV is to manage energy consumption in real-time application, which is proportional to the UAV transmit power. To tackle this important issue, we develop a real-time resource allocation algorithm for maximizing the energy efficiency by jointly optimizing the energy-harvesting time and power control for the considered (D2D) communication embedded with UAV. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms as running time for solving them can be conducted in milliseconds.

I. Introduction

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based communication networks with their flexible configuration and mobility nature can be more efficient and inexpensive for deployment of future wireless network [1] and the Internet of Things (IoT) applications [2]. Moreover, it has been emphasized that UAV-based wireless systems are capable of enhancing wireless communications by virtue of the dominant presence of line-of-sight (LOS) connections [1]. Therefore, UAVs can totally provide novel schemes to enhance the network coverage for serving more wireless devices. A major issue in UAV-based applications is that UAV devices typically have limited energy storage for flying operations whereby the deployment and resource allocation such as spectrum or transmit power allocation should be considered for efficient utility [3], [4]. However, there are only a few existing works that concentrate on the resource allocation aspect to improve the energy efficiency (EE) performance of UAV-based networks [5].