UAV-aided Multi-Way Communications

Multi-way and device-to-device (D2D) communications are currently considered for the design of future communication systems. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can be effectively deployed to extend the communication range of D2D networks. To model the UAV-D2D interaction, we study a multi-antenna multi-way channel with two D2D users and an intermittently available UAV node. The performance in terms of sum-rate of various transmission schemes is compared. Numerical results show that for different ground environments, the scheme based on a combination of interference alignment, zero-forcing and erasure-channel treatment outperforms other schemes at low, medium and high SNRs and thus represents a viable transmission strategy for UAV-aided multi-way D2D networks.