Maximizing indoor wireless coverage using UAVs equipped with directional antennas

Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can be used to provide wireless coverage during emergency cases where each UAV serves as an aerial wireless base station when the cellular network goes down. They can also be used to supplement the ground base station in order to provide better coverage and higher data rates for the users. In this paper, we aim to maximize the indoor wireless coverage using UAVs equipped with directional antennas. We study the case that the UAVs are using one channel, thus in order to maximize the total indoor wireless coverage, we avoid any overlapping in their coverage volumes. We present two methods to place the UAVs; providing wireless coverage from one building side and from two building sides. Our results show that the upside-down arrangements of UAVs, can improve the maximum total coverage by 100% compared to providing wireless coverage from one building side when the UAVs use one channel. In order to provide full wireless coverage, we use UAVs with multiple channels and show that the upside-down arrangements of UAVs required 20%-33% fewer number of UAVs. © 2017 IEEE.