A UAV-Mounted free space optical communication: Trajectory optimization for flight time

Ju Hyung Lee, Ki Hong Park, Young Chai Ko, Mohamed Slim Alouini

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

43 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

In this work, we address the trajectory optimization of a fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) using free space optical communication (FSOC). Here, we focus on maximizing the flight time of the UAV by considering practical constraints for wireless UAV communication, including limited propulsion energy and required data rates. We find optimized trajectories in various atmospheric environments (e.g., moderate-fog and heavy-fog conditions), while also considering the channel characteristics of FSOC. In addition to maximizing the flight time, we consider the energy efficiency maximization and operation-time minimization problem to find the suboptimal solutions required to meet those constraints. Furthermore, we introduce a low-complexity approach to the proposed framework. In order to address the optimization problem, we conduct a bisection method and sequential programming and introduce a new feasibility check algorithm. Although our design considers suboptimal solutions owing to the nonconvexity of the problems, our simulations indicate that the proposed scheme exhibits a gain of approximately 44.12% in terms of service time when compared to the conventional scheme.

Original languageEnglish
Article number8922897
Pages (from-to)1610-1621
Number of pages12
JournalIEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications
Volume19
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2020 Mar

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Manuscript received December 13, 2018; revised April 11, 2019, June 25, 2019, September 12, 2019, and November 18, 2019; accepted November 18, 2019. Date of publication December 4, 2019; date of current version March 10, 2020. This work was supported in part by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT) under Grant NRF-2018R1A2B2007789 and in part by the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. This article is to be presented in part at the 2019 IEEE Globecom Workshops. The associate editor coordinating the review of this article and approving it for publication was L. Galluccio. (Corresponding author: Young-Chai Ko.) J.-H. Lee and Y.-C. Ko are with the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Korea University, Seoul 02841, South Korea (e-mail: leejuhyung@korea.ac.kr; koyc@korea.ac.kr).

Publisher Copyright:
© 2002-2012 IEEE.

Keywords

  • Free space optical communication (FSOC)
  • UAV-mounted FSOC
  • flight time maximization
  • trajectory design
  • wireless communications with an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Computer Science Applications
  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering
  • Applied Mathematics

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