Edge-Prior Placement Algorithm for UAV-Mounted Base Stations

With the unique agility and flexibility, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are widely applied in various scenarios. Especially in the areas with disasters, UAVs can act as base stations (BSs) to provide wireless communication services for ground users. In order to reduce the costs, we prefer to use as few UAVs as possible. However, due to the coverage constraint, each UAV can only provide services for a certain number of ground users. Moreover, considering the acceptable receiving power, the coverage radius of UAV is limited. Combined with the above considerations, we present an efficient 3D placement algorithm of UAV-Mounted BSs to cover all of the ground users. In the horizontal direction, the Edge-Prior Placement Algorithm is proposed, which gives the preferential coverage to the outermost users. The complexity of the algorithm is O(n
²
log n). Then, the optimal height of each UAV is assigned. As a result, these UAVs fly at different heights and cover the ground users with different radii. Simulation results are provided to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm. We demonstrate the impacts of the upper bound of coverage radius and capacity constraint on the number of UAVs that are used to cover the ground users, which could provide a guideline for the deployment of UAVs.