Throughput Maximization for UAV-Enabled Data Collection

In this paper, we consider a scenario where an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) collects data from a set of nodes placed on a two-dimensional (2-D) plane. The UAV flies along a given line to collect data. To prevent transmission collisions, only one node is allowed to transmit data to the UAV at any time, and the number of nodes that can transmit data to the UAV cannot exceed a specified number to avoid frequent switches. The problem is to select a subset of nodes and schedule their transmission time to maximize the UAV’s throughput. After formulating the problem, we find that it is difficult to solve due to mixture of real variables and integer variables. We then propose to decompose the problem into subproblems, and give a polynomial time algorithm to solve each subproblem to optimality. We then get an exact algorithm by solving all subproblems. Unfortunately, due to an exponential number of subproblems, the overall running time is exponential with respect to the input size. We then propose two polynomial-time suboptimal algorithms to solve the problem, both of which explore a polynomial number of subproblems. Simulations show that the suboptimal algorithms perform comparably with the exponential-time exact algorithm, while the running time is much smaller.