Drone Base Station Trajectory Management for Optimal Scheduling in LTE-Based Sparse Delay-Sensitive M2M Networks

Providing connectivity in areas out of reach of the cellular infrastructure is a very active area of research. This connectivity is particularly needed in case of the deployment of machine type communication devices (MTCDs) for critical purposes such as homeland security. In such applications, MTCDs are deployed in areas that are hard to reach using regular communications infrastructure while the collected data is timely critical. Drone-supported communications constitute a new trend in complementing the reach of the terrestrial communication infrastructure. In this study, drones are used as base stations to provide real-time communication services to gather critical data out of a group of MTCDs that are sparsely deployed in a marine environment. Studying different communication technologies as LTE, WiFi, LPWAN and Free-Space Optical communication (FSOC) incorporated with the drone communications was important in the first phase of this research to identify the best candidate for addressing this need. We have determined the cellular technology, and particularly LTE, to be the most suitable candidate to support such applications. In this case, an LTE base station would be mounted on the drone which will help communicate with the different MTCDs to transmit their data to the network backhaul. We then formulate the problem model mathematically and devise the trajectory planning and scheduling algorithm that decides the drone path and the resulting scheduling. Based on this formulation, we decided to compare between an Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) based technique that optimizes the drone movement among the sparsely-deployed MTCDs and a Genetic Algorithm (GA) based solution that achieves the same purpose. This optimization is based on minimizing the energy cost of the drone movement while ensuring the data transmission deadline missing is minimized. We present the results of several simulation experiments that validate the different performance aspects of the technique

Aerial Base Station Deployment for Post-Disaster Public Safety Applications

Earthquakes and floods are constant threats to most of the countries in the world. After such catastrophes, a rapid response is needed, which includes communications not only for first responders but also for local civilians. Even though there are technologies and specialized personnel for rapid deployment, it is common that external factors will hinder the arrival of help while communication requirements are urgently required. Such communication technologies would aid tasks regarding organization and information dissemination from authorities to the civilians and vice-versa. This necessity is due to protocols and applications to allocate the number of emergency resources per location and to locate missing people. In this thesis, we investigate the deployment problem of Mobile Aerial Base Stations (MABS). Our main objective is to ensure periodic wireless communication for geographically spread User Equipment (UE) based on LTE technology. First, we establish a precedent of emergency situations where MABS would be useful. We also provide an introduction to the study and work conducted in this thesis. Second, we provide a literature review of existing solutions was made to determine the advantages and disadvantages of certain technologies regarding the described necessity. Third, we determine how MABS, such as gliders or light tactical balloons that are assumed to be moving at an average speed of 50 km/h, will be deployed. These MABS would visit different cluster centroids determined by an Affinity Propagation Clustering algorithm. Additionally, a combination of graph theory and Genetic Algorithm (GA) is implemented through mutators and fitness functions to obtain best flyable paths through an evolution pool of 100. Additionally, Poisson, Normal, and Uniform distributions are utilized to determine the amount of Base Stations and UEs. Then, for every distribution combination, a set of simulations is conducted to obtain the best flyable paths. Serviced UE performance indicators of algorithm efficiency are analyzed to determine whether the applied algorithm is effective in providing a solution to the presented problem. Finally, in Chapter 5, we conclude our work by supporting that the proposed model would suffice the needs of mobile users given the proposed emergency scenario. Adviser: Yi Qia