Multiple UAVs as Relays: Multi-Hop Single Link Versus Multiple Dual-Hop Links
Multiple UAVs as Relays: Multi-Hop Single Link Versus Multiple Dual-Hop Links
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DOI：
10.1109/twc.2018.2859394
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发表时间：
2018-09-01
影响因子：
10.4
通讯作者：
Alouini, Mohamed-Slim
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Chen, Yunfei;Zhao, Nan;Alouini, Mohamed-Slim
无人机（UAV）在通信中有许多重要的应用。它们可以作为空中基站或移动的中继来提高服务质量。在本文中，我们研究了使用多无人机中继。考虑两个典型的使用多个无人机作为中继，形成一个单一的多跳链路或多个双跳链路，我们首先优化无人机的位置，最大限度地提高端到端的信号噪声比为三个有用的信道模型和两个常见的中继协议。基于最优配置，这两个中继设置，然后比较的中断和误码率。仿真结果表明，当空-地路径损耗参数与无人机位置有关时，双跳多链路方案优于多跳单链路方案。否则，只有当源到目的地的距离较小时，双跳选项才更好。此外，解码和转发UAV提供比放大和转发UAV更好的性能。研究还揭示了重要的系统参数对最佳无人机位置和中继性能的影响，提供有用的指导方针。
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have found many important applications in communications. They can serve as either aerial base stations or mobile relays to improve the quality of services. In this paper, we study the use of multiple UAVs in relaying. Considering two typical uses of multiple UAVs as relays that form either a single multi-hop link or multiple dual-hop links, we first optimize the placement of the UAVs by maximizing the end-to-end signal-to-noise ratio for three useful channel models and two common relaying protocols. Based on the optimum placement, the two relaying setups are then compared in terms of outage and bit error rate. Numerical results show that the dual-hop multi-link option is better than the multi-hop single link option when the air-to-ground path loss parameters depend on the UAV positions. Otherwise, the dual-hop option is only better when the source-to-destination distance is small. Also, decode-and-forward UAVs provide better performances than the amplify-and-forward UAVs. The investigation also reveals the effects of important system parameters on the optimum UAV positions and relaying performances to provide useful guidelines.