Efficient Fuzzy-Based 3-D Flying Base Station Positioning and Trajectory for Emergency Management in 5G and Beyond Cellular Networks

The need for continuous coverage, as well as low-latency, and ultrareliable communication in 5G and beyond cellular networks encouraged the deployment of high-altitude platforms and low-altitude drones as flying base stations (FBSs) to provide last-mile communication where high cost or geographical restrictions hinder the installation of terrestrial base stations (BSs) or during the disasters where the BSs are damaged. The performance of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-assisted cellular systems in terms of coverage and quality of service offered for terrestrial users depends on the number of deployed FBSs, their 3-D location as well as trajectory. While several recent works have studied the 3-D positioning in UAV-assisted 5G networks, the problem of jointly addressing coverage and user data rate has not been addressed yet. In this article, we propose a solution for joint 3-D positioning and trajectory planning of FBSs with the objectives of the total distance between users and FBSs and minimizing the sum of FBSs flight distance by developing a fuzzy candidate points selection method.