Joint Beamforming, User Association, and Height Control for Cellular-Enabled UAV Communications

Jiancao Hou; Yansha Deng; Mohammad Shikh-Bahaei

doi:10.1109/TCOMM.2021.3063775

Joint Beamforming, User Association, and Height Control for Cellular-Enabled UAV Communications

Jiancao Hou, Yansha Deng, Mohammad Shikh-Bahaei

King's College London

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

8 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Supporting reliable and seamless connectivity for aerial users, such as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), is one of the key challenges for the next-generation cellular networks. To tackle this challenge, we propose a joint beamforming, user association, and UAV-height control framework for cellular-connected multi-UAV communications. Our objective is to maximize the minimum achievable rate for UAVs subject to co-existing terrestrial users' rate constraints. A hierarchical bi-layer iterative algorithm is devised to solve the problem. By using the projection gradient method in inner layer iterations and the geometric program modeling plus the convex-concave procedure in outer layer iterations, our proposed algorithm is proved to converge to a local optimum. We also examine our proposed algorithm under the practical condition where channel estimation is not perfect. Numerical results show that our proposed joint beamforming, user association, and UAV-height control framework outperforms the conventional nearest UAV association method in terms of UAVs' minimum achievable rate for both perfect and imperfect channel estimation cases. We also observe different UAVs' heights (i.e., between 100m and 300m) do not affect the UAVs' achievable rates. For the case with moving UAV, we also study the trade-off between UAVs' minimum achievable rate and the frequency of updating optimization variables.

Original language	English
Article number	9369339
Pages (from-to)	3598-3613
Number of pages	16
Journal	IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS
Volume	69
Issue number	6
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1109/TCOMM.2021.3063775
Publication status	Published - Jun 2021

Keywords

cellular networks
height control
MIMO beamforming
spectrum efficiency
UAV association

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10.1109/TCOMM.2021.3063775

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title = "Joint Beamforming, User Association, and Height Control for Cellular-Enabled UAV Communications",

abstract = "Supporting reliable and seamless connectivity for aerial users, such as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), is one of the key challenges for the next-generation cellular networks. To tackle this challenge, we propose a joint beamforming, user association, and UAV-height control framework for cellular-connected multi-UAV communications. Our objective is to maximize the minimum achievable rate for UAVs subject to co-existing terrestrial users' rate constraints. A hierarchical bi-layer iterative algorithm is devised to solve the problem. By using the projection gradient method in inner layer iterations and the geometric program modeling plus the convex-concave procedure in outer layer iterations, our proposed algorithm is proved to converge to a local optimum. We also examine our proposed algorithm under the practical condition where channel estimation is not perfect. Numerical results show that our proposed joint beamforming, user association, and UAV-height control framework outperforms the conventional nearest UAV association method in terms of UAVs' minimum achievable rate for both perfect and imperfect channel estimation cases. We also observe different UAVs' heights (i.e., between 100m and 300m) do not affect the UAVs' achievable rates. For the case with moving UAV, we also study the trade-off between UAVs' minimum achievable rate and the frequency of updating optimization variables.",

keywords = "cellular networks, height control, MIMO beamforming, spectrum efficiency, UAV association",

author = "Jiancao Hou and Yansha Deng and Mohammad Shikh-Bahaei",

note = "Funding Information: Manuscript received December 12, 2020; accepted February 22, 2021. Date of publication March 4, 2021; date of current version June 16, 2021. This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC) through the Scalable Full Duplex Dense Wireless Networks (SENSE) under Grant EP/P003486/1. The associate editor coordinating the review of this article and approving it for publication was S. M. Perlaza. (Corresponding author: Jiancao Hou.) The authors are with the Department of Engineering, King{\textquoteright}s College London, London WC2R 2LS, U.K. (e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]). Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 1972-2012 IEEE. Copyright: Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.",

year = "2021",

month = jun,

doi = "10.1109/TCOMM.2021.3063775",

language = "English",

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journal = "IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS",

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AU - Hou, Jiancao

AU - Deng, Yansha

AU - Shikh-Bahaei, Mohammad

N1 - Funding Information: Manuscript received December 12, 2020; accepted February 22, 2021. Date of publication March 4, 2021; date of current version June 16, 2021. This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC) through the Scalable Full Duplex Dense Wireless Networks (SENSE) under Grant EP/P003486/1. The associate editor coordinating the review of this article and approving it for publication was S. M. Perlaza. (Corresponding author: Jiancao Hou.) The authors are with the Department of Engineering, King’s College London, London WC2R 2LS, U.K. (e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]). Publisher Copyright: © 1972-2012 IEEE. Copyright: Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

PY - 2021/6

Y1 - 2021/6

N2 - Supporting reliable and seamless connectivity for aerial users, such as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), is one of the key challenges for the next-generation cellular networks. To tackle this challenge, we propose a joint beamforming, user association, and UAV-height control framework for cellular-connected multi-UAV communications. Our objective is to maximize the minimum achievable rate for UAVs subject to co-existing terrestrial users' rate constraints. A hierarchical bi-layer iterative algorithm is devised to solve the problem. By using the projection gradient method in inner layer iterations and the geometric program modeling plus the convex-concave procedure in outer layer iterations, our proposed algorithm is proved to converge to a local optimum. We also examine our proposed algorithm under the practical condition where channel estimation is not perfect. Numerical results show that our proposed joint beamforming, user association, and UAV-height control framework outperforms the conventional nearest UAV association method in terms of UAVs' minimum achievable rate for both perfect and imperfect channel estimation cases. We also observe different UAVs' heights (i.e., between 100m and 300m) do not affect the UAVs' achievable rates. For the case with moving UAV, we also study the trade-off between UAVs' minimum achievable rate and the frequency of updating optimization variables.

AB - Supporting reliable and seamless connectivity for aerial users, such as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), is one of the key challenges for the next-generation cellular networks. To tackle this challenge, we propose a joint beamforming, user association, and UAV-height control framework for cellular-connected multi-UAV communications. Our objective is to maximize the minimum achievable rate for UAVs subject to co-existing terrestrial users' rate constraints. A hierarchical bi-layer iterative algorithm is devised to solve the problem. By using the projection gradient method in inner layer iterations and the geometric program modeling plus the convex-concave procedure in outer layer iterations, our proposed algorithm is proved to converge to a local optimum. We also examine our proposed algorithm under the practical condition where channel estimation is not perfect. Numerical results show that our proposed joint beamforming, user association, and UAV-height control framework outperforms the conventional nearest UAV association method in terms of UAVs' minimum achievable rate for both perfect and imperfect channel estimation cases. We also observe different UAVs' heights (i.e., between 100m and 300m) do not affect the UAVs' achievable rates. For the case with moving UAV, we also study the trade-off between UAVs' minimum achievable rate and the frequency of updating optimization variables.

KW - cellular networks

KW - height control

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KW - spectrum efficiency

KW - UAV association

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JF - IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS

IS - 6

M1 - 9369339

ER -

Joint Beamforming, User Association, and Height Control for Cellular-Enabled UAV Communications

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