Joint Power Control and Altitude Planning for Energy-Efficient UAV-Assisted Vehicular Networks

The increasing demand for high-speed and low-latency vehicular communication has motivated the deployment of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) in vehicular networks. In this paper, we propose an energy-efficient power control and altitude planning for a UAV-assisted vehicular network. We formulate the optimization problem of maximizing the system energy efficiency considering the reliability requirements of vehicular users, the UAV-BS hovering altitude limitations, and the feasibility of transmission power levels. The problem is non-convex, and we reformulate it into a convex one using the Dinkelbach method and high-SINR approximation. The numerical results demonstrate the convergence of our algorithm to a locally optimal solution in polynomial-time complexity, that is close to the globally optimal solution.