Aerial-SON: UAV-based Self-Organizing Network for Video Streaming in Dense Urban Scenario

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly being used in several applications and scenarios for providing wireless connectivity-on-the-fly. UAV networks require reliable connectivity for safe control and data exchange with mobile devices and ground terminals. UAVs can act as aerial user equipment (AUE) or Aerial access points (AP) that co-exists with the terrestrial users. We propose a self-organizing UAV-based communication framework, Aerial-SON, for efficient video streaming in dense urban scenarios. The video is adaptively streamed between drones (D2D communication) and drone to ground control station (GCS) communication with Wi-Fi Direct and Dynamic Wi-Fi configuration. The AUE consists of mobile transmitter and receiver modules in the Heterogeneous Network (Het-Net) scenario. These AUEs provide smaller cells in these Het-Nets that enable dynamic and sustained wireless video connectivity. Simulation and experimental study of UAV based Het-Net considering different network scenarios provides QoS performance analysis during video streaming among drones and with GCS. Dynamic selection of network configuration mode in our proposed framework is more effective in terms of better throughput, end-to-end transmission delay, packet retransmission, packets loss, and system utility gain during video transmission.