Distributed Power Allocation for UAV-Assisted Multi-User Relay Networks

In this paper, we consider a multi-user relay system where an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) serves as a relay to transfer data from sources to destinations. The UAV cruises over the ground users and is capable of buffering users’ data so that uplink and downlink can be scheduled independently. A throughput maximization problem is formulated, and a distributed power allocation algorithm is proposed based on alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) to reduce the computational task and energy consumption of the UAV. Numerical results show that the proposed distributed algorithm converges to the centralized optimal one with a few number of iterations, and outperforms the uniform power allocation algorithm.