Joint Configuration of Transmission Direction and Altitude in UAV-based Two-Way Communication

When considering unidirectional communication for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as flying Base Stations (BSs), either uplink or downlink, the system is limited through the co-channel interference that takes place over line-of-sight (LoS) links. This paper considers two-way communication and takes advantage of the fact that the interference among the ground devices takes place through non-line-of-sight (NLoS) links. UAVs can be deployed at the high altitudes to have larger coverage, while the two-way communication allows to configure the transmission direction. Using these two levers, we show how the system throughput can be maximized for a given deployment of the ground devices.