Drone-Assisted Multi-User Scenario: Composite Relaying and Probability-Based UL/DL Channel Modeling for A2G Links

Drone-assisted network coding cooperative communication (DA-NC-CC) has emerged as a promising candidate for improving the reliability and throughput of next-generation wireless communication system. However, the conventional amplify-and-forward (AF) and decode-and-forward (DF) relaying schemes used in the DA-NC-CC system are not suitable under the high and low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regimes, respectively. Furthermore, most of the works have considered either Rayleigh or Rician fading channel model for the entire DA-NC-CC system, which is an idealistic assumption. In this work, we propose a composite relaying at drone on the basis of instantaneous SNR, which is more generic and practical as compared to the classical AF and DF schemes. A probabilistic channel model is also proposed for uplink (UL) and downlink (DL), which is based on occurrence probability of line-of-sight (LoS) component. Simulation indicate that the proposed composite relaying scheme delivers actual performance and lower computational complexity as compared to the existing state-of-art relaying schemes. However, the actual performance in the case of the proposed work comes over the existing state-of-the-art (AF/DF relaying in Rayleigh and Rician fading distribution environment) at the cost of processing time and hardware complexity.