Joint User Association and UAV Location Optimization for UAV-Aided Communications

This letter is concerned with investigating a joint user association and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) location optimization problem for UAV-aided communications. Different from the majority of existing studies, this letter aims at deriving solutions to the joint optimization problem that is modeled as a mixed-integer non-convex optimization problem (MINCOP) with a goal of maximizing users’ total achievable data rates. A novel iterative optimization scheme is proposed to handle the MINCOP. Specifically, the MINCOP is first decomposed into an integer optimization subproblem and a non-convex optimization subproblem. An iterative algorithm is then developed to optimize these two separated subproblems alternatively. Besides, the non-convexity of the non-convex subproblem is handled via successive convex approximation. Based on approximate results, Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) conditions are leveraged to obtain the evolutionary-form solution to the joint optimization problem. The comparison with the state-of-the-art verifies that the developed algorithm is convergent and is able to achieve good performance.