Comparison of Optimization Methods for Aerial Base Station Placement with Users Mobility

Aerial base stations have been recently considered in the deployment of wireless networks. Finding the optimal position for one or multiple aerial base stations is a complex problem tackled by several works. However, just a few works consider the mobility of the users which makes necessary an online optimization to follow the changes in the scenario where the optimization is performed. This paper deals with the online optimization of an aerial base station placement considering different types of users mobility and three algorithms: a Q-learning technique, a Gradient-based solution and a Greedy-search solution. Our objective is to minimize in an urban environment the path loss of the user at street level with the highest path loss. Simulation results show that the performance of the three methods is similar when a high number of users move randomly and uniformly around the scenario under test. Nevertheless, in some situations when the number of users is reduced or when the users move together in a similar direction, both Gradient and Greedy algorithms present a significantly better performance than the Q-learning method.The work of Danaisy Prado was supported by the H2020 Marie Curie Program, with Project Grant No. 766231 WAVECOMBE - ITN - 2017Prado-Alvarez, D.; Inca-Sanchez, SA.; Martín-Sacristán, D.; Monserrat Del Río, JF. (2019). Comparison of Optimization Methods for Aerial Base Station Placement with Users Mobility. IEEE. 485-489. https://doi.org/10.1109/EuCNC.2019.8802053S48548

Aerial base station placement in temporary-event scenarios

Die Anforderungen an den Netzdatenverkehr sind in den letzten Jahren dramatisch gestiegen, was ein großes Interesse an der Entwicklung neuartiger Lösungen zur Erhöhung der Netzkapazität in Mobilfunknetzen erzeugt hat. Besonderes Augenmerk wurde auf das Problem der Kapazitätsverbesserung bei temporären Veranstaltungen gelegt, bei denen das Umfeld im Wesentlichen dynamisch ist. Um der Dynamik der sich verändernden Umgebung gerecht zu werden und die Bodeninfrastruktur durch zusätzliche Kapazität zu unterstützen, wurde der Einsatz von Luftbasisstationen vorgeschlagen. Die Luftbasisstationen können in der Nähe des Nutzers platziert werden und aufgrund der im Vergleich zur Bodeninfrastruktur höheren Lage die Vorteile der Sichtlinienkommunikation nutzen. Dies reduziert den Pfadverlust und ermöglicht eine höhere Kanalkapazität. Das Optimierungsproblem der Maximierung der Netzkapazität durch die richtige Platzierung von Luftbasisstationen bildet einen Schwerpunkt der Arbeit. Es ist notwendig, das Optimierungsproblem rechtzeitig zu lösen, um auf Veränderungen in der dynamischen Funkumgebung zu reagieren. Die optimale Platzierung von Luftbasisstationen stellt jedoch ein NP-schweres Problem dar, wodurch die Lösung nicht trivial ist. Daher besteht ein Bedarf an schnellen und skalierbaren Optimierungsalgorithmen. Als Erstes wird ein neuartiger Hybrid-Algorithmus (Projected Clustering) vorgeschlagen, der mehrere Lösungen auf der Grundlage der schnellen entfernungsbasierten Kapazitätsapproximierung berechnet und sie auf dem genauen SINR-basierten Kapazitätsmodell bewertet. Dabei werden suboptimale Lösungen vermieden. Als Zweites wird ein neuartiges verteiltes, selbstorganisiertes Framework (AIDA) vorgeschlagen, welches nur lokales Wissen verwendet, den Netzwerkmehraufwand verringert und die Anforderungen an die Kommunikation zwischen Luftbasisstationen lockert. Bei der Formulierung des Platzierungsproblems konnte festgestellt werden, dass Unsicherheiten in Bezug auf die Modellierung der Luft-Bodensignalausbreitung bestehen. Da dieser Aspekt im Rahmen der Analyse eine wichtige Rolle spielt, erfolgte eine Validierung moderner Luft-Bodensignalausbreitungsmodelle, indem reale Messungen gesammelt und das genaueste Modell für die Simulationen ausgewählt wurden.As the traffic demands have grown dramatically in recent years, so has the interest in developing novel solutions that increase the network capacity in cellular networks. The problem of capacity improvement is even more complex when applied to a dynamic environment during a disaster or temporary event. The use of aerial base stations has received much attention in the last ten years as the solution to cope with the dynamics of the changing environment and to supplement the ground infrastructure with extra capacity. Due to higher elevations and possibility to place aerial base stations in close proximity to the user, path loss is significantly smaller in comparison to the ground infrastructure, which in turn enables high data capacity. We are studying the optimization problem of maximizing network capacity by proper placement of aerial base stations. To handle the changes in the dynamic radio environment, it is necessary to promptly solve the optimization problem. However, we show that the optimal placement of aerial base stations is the NP-hard problem and its solution is non-trivial, and thus, there is a need for fast and scalable optimization algorithms. This dissertation investigates how to solve the placement problem efficiently and to support the dynamics of temporary events. First, we propose a novel hybrid algorithm (Projected Clustering), which calculates multiple solutions based on the fast distance-based capacity approximation and evaluates them on the accurate SINR-based capacity model, avoiding sub-optimal solutions. Second, we propose a novel distributed, self-organized framework (AIDA), which conducts a decision-making process using only local knowledge, decreasing the network overhead and relaxing the requirements for communication between aerial base stations. During the formulation of the placement problem, we found that there is still considerable uncertainty with regard to air-to-ground propagation modeling. Since this aspect plays an important role in our analysis, we validated state-of-the-art air-to-ground propagation models by collecting real measurements and chose the most accurate model for the simulations

Deployment Strategies of Multiple Aerial BSs for User Coverage and Power Efficiency Maximization

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) based aerial base stations (BSs) can provide rapid communication services to ground users and are thus promising for future communication systems. In this paper, we consider a scenario where no functional terrestrial BSs are available and the aim is deploying multiple aerial BSs to cover a maximum number of users within a certain target area. To this end, we first propose a naive successive deployment method, which converts the non-convex constraints in the involved optimization into a combination of linear constraints through geometrical relaxation. Then we investigate a deployment method based on K-means clustering. The method divides the target area into K convex subareas, where within each subarea, a mixed integer non-linear problem (MINLP) is solved. An iterative power efficient technique is further proposed to improve coverage probability with reduced power. Finally, we propose a robust technique for compensating the loss of coverage probability in the existence of inaccurate user location information (ULI). Our simulation results show that, the proposed techniques achieve an up to 30% higher coverage probability when users are not distributed uniformly. In addition, the proposed simultaneous deployment techniques, especially the one using iterative algorithm improve power-efficiency by up to 15% compared to the benchmark circle packing theory