Mobile Aerial Base Stations for Ultra-Reliable and Energy-Efficient Downlink Communications

Mobile aerial base stations (BSs) for ultra-reliable device-centric downlink communication are proposed in this paper. BSs are carried on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that travel and transmit data to devices when they are hovering as close to the scheduled device as possible. The performance of the proposed system is compared to a network-centric downlink scheme in which stationary UAV-BSs communicate with the devices. The transmission success probability is derived using stochastic geometry, with the model taking into account the aggregate interference, trajectory, height, antenna directivity, air-to-ground channel, and others. Owing to its ultra-reliability, the device-centric scheme outperforms the network-centric one in terms of the downlink energy efficiency from the UAV perspective in addition to offering constant performance for all devices regardless of their locations.