Base-Stations Up in the Air: Multi-UAV Trajectory Control for Min-Rate Maximization in Uplink C-RAN

In this paper we study the impact of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) trajectories on terrestrial users' spectral efficiency (SE). Assuming a strong line of sight path to the users, the distance from all users to all UAVs influence the outcome of an online trajectory optimization. The trajectory should be designed in a way that the fairness rate is maximized over time. That means, the UAVs travel in the directions that maximize the minimum of the users' SE. From the free-space path-loss channel model, a data-rate gradient is calculated and used to direct the UAVs in a long-term perspective towards the local optimal solution on the two-dimensional spatial grid. Therefore, a control system implementation is designed. Thereby, the UAVs follow the data-rate gradient direction while having a more smooth trajectory compared with a gradient method. The system can react to changes of the user locations online; this system design captures the interaction between multiple UAV trajectories by joint processing at the central unit, e.g., a ground base station. Because of the wide spread of user locations, the UAVs end up in optimal locations widely apart from each other. Besides, the SE expectancy is enhancing continuously while moving along this trajectory.