3D Deployment of UAV-BSs for Effective Communication Coverage

In the field of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), their potential as aerial base stations for post-disaster communication recovery or providing communication coverage in remote areas has gained global recognition. However, the challenge of striking a balance between maximizing coverage and minimizing energy consumption persists. To address this issue, we introduce a novel distributed Three-Dimensional (3D) deployment approach for UAV-based Base Stations (UAV-BSs) called 3D deployment for effective communication coverage (DECC). Firstly, the 3D deployment problem is decoupled into a horizontal placement subproblem and an altitude determination subproblem. Then, we propose an enhanced genetic algorithm to obtain the optimal horizontal location of UAV-BSs, which incorporates adaptive two-point crossover and an inferior value replacement strategy. Finally, a gray wolf optimization with the dynamic weight is adopted to determine the altitude to optimize the transmit power while ensuring quality of service for the users. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can get a better coverage compared to the current deployment strategies.