Three-Dimensional Cooperative Deployment Optimization of Multiple Drone Base Stations with Building Obstruction Considerations

The surge in Internet of Things (IoT) adoption necessitates robust and flexible network infrastructure. Drone based stations (DBSs), with their low cost and rapid deployment capabilities, are commonly utilized for network services in emergency scenarios. A pivotal challenge lies in deploying the limited DBSs for maximum coverage to ground users while accounting for building obstructions and DBS network robustness. To tackle the influence of building obstructions, a binary channel model is adopted that classifies communication links between users and DBSs as either Line-of-Sight (LoS) or Non-line-of-Sight (NLoS). The cooperative deployment optimization problem of multi-DBS is formulated for maximum coverage considering capacity, coverage and dual connectivity constraints. Based on the characteristics of drone swarm intelligence, a biogeography-based optimization algorithm is proposed to solve the problem. Ultimately, experiments on a practical case verified the efficacy of the proposed method.