QoS-Guaranteed Multi-UAV Coverage Scheme for IoT Communications With Interference Management

Due to maneuverability and Line-of-Sight (LoS) path, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) can serve as aerial base station to provide communication coverage and data collection for emerging Internet of Things (IoT) in the hotspot. However, limited spectrum resource and different Quality-of-Service (QoS) requirement impose critical challenges for UAV-aided IoT communications to cover massive IoT equipments (IEs). In this article, we propose the QoS-guaranteed multi-UAV coverage (QMC) scheme with interference management, which determines UAV deployment and spectrum resource allocation, to cover all ground IEs that have different QoS requirements. First, the interference management-based spectrum resource allocation (IMSA) algorithm, which utilizes the tabu search method of graph coloring, is proposed to avoid the interference between UAVs that have same IEs in their coverage. Then, we obtain the QoS-guaranteed single UAV placement (QSUP) algorithm to maximize the capacity of UAV while satisfying different QoS requirements for ground IEs. Finally, based on the IMSA and QSUP algorithms, the QMC scheme with interference management, which serves all ground IEs, is proposed to optimize the deployment of multiple UAVs for maximization of average UAV capacity. Simulation results demonstrate that compared with traditional schemes, the proposed QMC scheme achieves smaller UAV number and higher average UAV capacity due to the efficient interference management.