Proactive radio- and QoS-aware UAV as BS deployment to improve cellular operations

Abstract Unmanned Aerial Vehicle as Base Stations (UAV-BS) is a promising technology for mitigating Terrestrial Base Stations (TBS) failures or becoming an ideal temporary solution to offloading. UAV-BS can be deployed to complement existing cellular systems by providing additional capacity to hotspot areas, as well as to provide network coverage in emergency and public safety situations, for instance, during a parade or flash-crowd events. A key issue for the success of UAV-BS is to design and model how to define the position and behavior of UAV-BSs to improve the coverage area for mobile users while enhancing the Quality of Service (QoS). This article proposes ProactivE Radio-QoS-aware UAV-BS deployment mechanism to improve Cellular nEtwork oPeraTion (PERCEPT) to define the positioning of the UAV-BS’s in specific zones according to the conditions of the LTE networks and QoS. PERCEPT divides the optimal positioning problem into three parts, prediction of users mobility, radio- and QoS-aware user clustering, and positioning of the UAV-BS’s. Simulation results show the gains of PERCEPT by improving in 33%, 30%, and 50% the throughput, packet delivery ratio, and delay, respectively, compared to state-of-the-art algorithms in UAV-assisted cellular scenarios.