In this paper, a novel concept of three-dimensional (3D) cellular networks, that integrate drone base stations (drone-BS) and cellular-connected drone users (drone-UEs), is introduced. For this new 3D cellular architecture, a novel framework for network planning for drone-BSs as well as latency-minimal cell association for drone-UEs is proposed. For network planning, a tractable method for drone-BSs' deployment based on the notion of truncated octahedron shapes is proposed that ensures full coverage for a given space with minimum number of drone-BSs. In addition, to characterize frequency planning in such 3D wireless networks, an analytical expression for the feasible integer frequency reuse factors is derived. Subsequently, an optimal 3D cell association scheme is developed for which the drone-UEs' latency, considering transmission, computation, and backhaul delays, is minimized. To this end, first, the spatial distribution of the drone-UEs is estimated using a kernel density estimation method, and the parameters of the estimator are obtained using a cross-validation method. Then, according to the spatial distribution of drone-UEs and the locations of drone-BSs, the latency-minimal 3D cell association for drone-UEs is derived by exploiting tools from optimal transport theory. Simulation results show that the proposed approach reduces the latency of drone-UEs compared to the classical cell association approach that uses a signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) criterion. In particular, the proposed approach yields a reduction of up to 46 in the average latency compared to the SINR-based association. The results also show that the proposed latency-optimal cell association improves the spectral efficiency of a 3D wireless cellular network of drones.
Recent studies on drone communications have investigated various design challenges that include performance characterization, trajectory optimization, 3D deployment, user-to-drone association, and cellular-connected UAVs. For instance, in @cite_37 , the authors proposed an algorithm for jointly optimizing the locations and number of drones to maximize wireless coverage. The work in @cite_3 studied the optimal 3D deployment of UAVs for maximizing the number of covered ground users under quality-of-service (QoS) constraints. In @cite_9 , the authors proposed a framework for strategic placement of multiple drone-BSs that provides wireless connectivity for a large-scale ground network. However, the prior studies on deployment of UAV base stations ignore the existence of flying drone-UEs.
@cite_9 @cite_37 @cite_3
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Using drone base stations (drone-BSs) in wireless networks has started attracting attention. Drone-BSs can assist the ground BSs in both capacity and coverage enhancement. One of the important problems about integrating drone-BSs to cellular networks is the management of their placement to satisfy the dynamic system requirements. In this paper, we propose a method to find the positions of drone-BSs in an area with different user densities using a heuristic algorithm. The goal is to find the minimum number of drone-BSs and their 3D placement so that all the users are served. Our simulation results show that the proposed approach can satisfy the quality-of-service requirements of the network. The need for a rapid-to-deploy solution for providing wireless cellular services can be realized by unmanned aerial vehicle base stations (UAV-BSs). To the best of our knowledge, this letter is the first in literature that studies a novel 3-D UAV-BS placement that maximizes the number of covered users with different quality-of-service requirements. We model the placement problem as a multiple circles placement problem and propose an optimal placement algorithm that utilizes an exhaustive search (ES) over a 1-D parameter in a closed region. We also propose a low-complexity algorithm, namely, maximal weighted area (MWA) algorithm to tackle the placement problem. Numerical simulations are presented showing that the MWA algorithm performs very close to the ES algorithm with a significant complexity reduction.