Research on the Total Channel Capacities Pertaining to Two Coverage Layouts for Three-Dimensional, UAV-Assisted Ad Hoc Networks

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) employed as airborne base stations (BSs) are considered the essential components in future sixth-generation wireless networks due to their mobility and line-of-sight communication links. For a UAV-assisted ad hoc network, its total channel capacity is greatly influenced by the deployment of UAV-BSs and the corresponding coverage layouts, where square and hexagonal cells are partitioned to divide the zones individual UAVs should serve. In this paper, the total channel capacities of these two kinds of coverage layouts are evaluated using our proposed novel computationally efficient channel capacity estimation scheme. The mean distance (MD) between a UAV-BS in the network and its served users as well as the MD from these users to the neighboring UAV-BSs are incorporated into the estimation of the achievable total channel capacity. We can significantly reduce the computational complexity by using a new polygon division strategy. The simulation results demonstrate that the square cell coverage layout can always lead to a superior channel capacity (with an average increase of 7.67% to be precise) to the hexagonal cell coverage layout for UAV-assisted ad hoc networks.