Energy Efficient Multi-Antenna UAV-Enabled Mobile Relay

In this paper, we study an energy efficient multi-antenna unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)-enabled half-duplex mobile relaying system under Rician fading channels. By assuming that the UAV follows a circular trajectory at fixed altitude and applying the decode-and-forward relaying strategy, we maximize the energy efficiency by jointly designing beamforming, power allocation, circular radius and flight speed, subject to the sum transmit power constraint on source node and UAV relay node. First, we maximize the end-to-end signal-to-noise ratio by jointly designing beamforming and statistical power allocation. Based on the obtained beamforming and power allocation results, we then obtain a semi closed-form expression of energy efficiency, and finally maximize energy efficiency by optimizing flight speed and circular radius, allowing optimal circular radius to be obtained via numerical computation. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can effectively enhance the system energy efficiency.

Energy Model for UAV Communications:Experimental Validation and Model Generalization

Wireless communication involving unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs)is expected to play an important role in future wireless networks.However,different from conventional terrestrial communication systems,UAVs typically have rather limited onboard energy on one hand,and require additional flying energy consumption on the other hand.This renders energy-efficient UAV communication with smart energy expenditure of paramount importance.In this paper,via extensive flight experiments,we aim to firstly validate the recently derived theoretical energy model for rotary-wing UAVs,and then develop a general model for those complicated flight scenarios where rigorous theoretical model derivation is quite challenging,if not impossible.Specifically,we first investigate how UAV power consumption varies with its flying speed for the simplest straight-and-level flight.With about 12,000 valid power-speed data points collected,we first apply the model-based curve fitting to obtain the modelling parameters based on the theoretical closed-form energy model in the existing literature.In addition,in order to exclude the potential bias caused by the theoretical energy model,the obtained measurement data is also trained using a model-free deep neural network.It is found that the obtained curve from both methods can match quite well with the theoretical energy model.Next,we further extend the study to arbitrary 2-dimensional(2-D)flight,where,to our best knowledge,no rigorous theoretical derivation is available for the closed-form energy model as a function of its flying speed,direction,and acceleration.To fill the gap,we first propose a heuristic energy model for these more complicated cases,and then provide experimental validation based on the measurement results for circular level flight.