Performance Optimization in UAV-Assisted Wireless Powered mmWave Networks for Emergency Communications

Abstract

In this paper, we explore how a rotary-wing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) acts as an aerial millimeter wave (mmWave) base station to provide recharging service and radio access service in a postdisaster area with unknown user distribution. The addressed optimization problem is to find out the optimal path starting and ending at the same recharging point to cover a wider area under limited battery capacity, and it can be transformed to an extended multiarmed bandit (MAB) problem. We propose the two improved path planning algorithms to solve this optimization problem, which can improve the ability to explore the unknown user distribution. Simulation results show that, in terms of the total number of served user equipment (UE), the number of visited grids, the amount of data, the average throughput, and the battery capacity utilization level, one of our algorithms is superior to its corresponding comparison algorithm, while our other algorithm is superior to its corresponding comparison algorithm in terms of the number of visited grids.