UAV-Aided Localization and Communication: Joint Frame Structure, Beamwidth, and Power Allocation

In wireless sensors networks, integrating localization and communication technique is crucial for efficient spectrum and hardware utilizations. In this article, we present a novel framework of the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-aided localization and communication for ground node (GN), where the average spectral efficiency (SE) is used to reveal the intricate relationship among the frame structure, channel estimation error, and localization accuracy. In particular, we first derive the lower bounds for channel estimation error and the 3-D location prediction error, respectively. Leveraging these comprehensive analysis, we formulate a problem to maximize the average SE in the UAV–GN communication, where the frame structure, beamwidth, and power allocation can be jointly optimized. Subsequently, we propose an efficient iterative algorithm to address this nonconvex problem with closed-form expressions for beamwidth design and power allocation. Numerical results demonstrate that the performance of our proposed method can approach the upper bound with low complexity, and achieve over 70% performance gain compared with communication-only benchmarks. In addition, the analysis highlights the dominated impacts of the Doppler effect on the average SE.