Autonomous 3D Deployment of Aerial Base Stations in Wireless Networks with User Mobility

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have recently emerged as enablers for multitude use cases in 5G networks, one of which utilizes them as aerial base stations to intermittently serve mobile users in emergency situations or hard-to-reach areas. In this work, we address the problem of deploying multiple UAVs optimally in 3D space while autonomously adapting their positions as users move around within the network. We propose a novel approach with the objective of deploying the least number of UAVs to maintain target quality of service requirements. The problem of positioning UAVs in a 3D space is formulated as a mixed integer programming problem (MIP). To obtain an efficient solution, we propose and evaluate an autonomous positioning algorithm that can easily adapt as the users move within a specific area in the network. We present performance results for the algorithm as a function of various system parameters assuming a random walk mobility model. The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm compared to the optimal solution and related work in the literature for various network scenarios with user mobility.