Abstract

This paper proposes a promising solution to the flexibility and resilience requirement for serving cellular networks with low-altitude Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Base Stations (BSs). The developed solution enables to assist terrestrial stations to increase the capacity and coverage of networks. The solution feasibility is highlighted by simulation of 5G cellular networks planning of sports events by using a metaheuristic algorithm. This approach aims to determine the UAV-BS minimum number covering a stadium, while taking into account the cell capacity and coverage constraints, the system spectral efficiency and the being utilized UAVs battery life. The computed modelling results show that the proposed algorithmic approach is effective for finding the minimum number of UAV-BSs. As results, fewer UAV-BSs of 33 were needed to serve all users throughout the day for the deployment using the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm compared to Genetic Algorithm (GA). For the night-time deployment, 20 UAV-BSs were needed for both planning methods. Moreover, the convergence speeds demonstrate that the PSO and GA algorithms can reach the coverage target during the day and the night. The results indicate that the quality-of-service targets desired for the 5G cellular network of UAV-BS are reached in each scenario.

Keywords:Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV); UAV deployment planning; 5G network; Sports events; UAV base station (UAV-BS); Optimization model