Deployment of UAV-mounted access points according to spatial user locations in two-tier cellular networks

Abstract

We envision small cells mounted on unmanned aerial vehicles, to complement existing macrocell infrastructure. We demonstrate through numerical analysis that clustering algorithms can be used to position the airborne access points and select users to offload from the macrocells. We compare the performance of these deployments against equivalent simulated picocell deployments. We demonstrate that due to their ability to position themselves around exact user locations while maintaining a direct line-of-sight link the airborne access points provide a significantly improved received signal strength than the static picocell alternatives. We also find that the airborne access points provide superior service quality even in the presence of user and access point positioning errors.