On-Demand Coverage for Maritime Hybrid Satellite-UAV-Terrestrial Networks

In addition to marine satellites, shore-based terrestrial base stations (TBSs) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can be exploited to provide broadband communication services in the offshore area. TBSs should be deployed only at available sites, e.g., mountains with both power grid and optical fibers. UAVs can work only in the area with fine weather conditions. These practical constraints render the topology of an offshore hybrid UAV-terrestrial network quite irregular, leading to blind zones of coverage. To solve this problem, we consider on-demand coverage optimization of maritime hybrid satellite-UAV-terrestrial networks. We maximize the minimum user rate served by TBSs and UAVs, while guaranteeing the leakage interference to satellite users below an affordable threshold. The problem is non-convex. We solve it by using the random matrix theory and successive convex optimization tools. Simulation results demonstrate that the coverage performance in the offshore area can be significantly improved by using the proposed optimization scheme.