Stochastic Geometry-Based Analysis of Airborne Base Stations With Laser-Powered UAVs

One of the most promising solutions to the problem of limited flight time of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), is providing the UAVs with power through laser beams emitted from Laser Beam Directors (LBDs) deployed on the ground. In this letter, we study the performance of a laser-powered UAV-enabled communication system using tools from stochastic geometry. We first derive the energy coverage probability, which is defined as the probability of the UAV receiving enough energy to ensure successful operation (hovering and communication). Our results show that to ensure energy coverage, the distance between the UAV and its dedicated LBD must be below a certain threshold, for which we derive an expression as a function of the system parameters. Considering simultaneous information and power transmission through the laser beam using power splitting technique, we also derive the joint energy and the Signal-to-noise Ratio (SNR) coverage probability. The analytical and simulation results reveal some interesting insights. For instance, our results show that we need at least 6 LBDs/10km2 to ensure a reliable performance in terms of energy coverage probability.

[1]  Gaston H. Gonnet,et al.  On the LambertW function , 1996, Adv. Comput. Math..

[2]  Rui Zhang,et al.  Wireless communications with unmanned aerial vehicles: opportunities and challenges , 2016, IEEE Communications Magazine.

[3]  Halim Yanikomeroglu,et al.  3-D Placement of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Base Station (UAV-BS) for Energy-Efficient Maximal Coverage , 2017, IEEE Wireless Communications Letters.

[4]  Lutz H.-J. Lampe,et al.  Integrating UAVs into Existing Wireless Networks: A Stochastic Geometry Approach , 2018, 2018 IEEE Globecom Workshops (GC Wkshps).

[5]  Walid Saad,et al.  A Tutorial on UAVs for Wireless Networks: Applications, Challenges, and Open Problems , 2018, IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials.

[6]  Jie Xu,et al.  Throughput Maximization for Laser-Powered UAV Wireless Communication Systems , 2018, 2018 IEEE International Conference on Communications Workshops (ICC Workshops).

[7]  G. Agrawal.  Fiber‐Optic Communication Systems , 2021 .

[8]  Jie Xu,et al.  Energy Minimization for Wireless Communication With Rotary-Wing UAV , 2018, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.

[9]  George K. Karagiannidis,et al.  Airborne Radio Access Networks with Simultaneous Lightwave Information and Power Transfer (SLIPT) , 2018, 2018 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM).

[10]  Dennis K. Killinger,et al.  Free Space Optics for Laser Communication Through the Air , 2002 .

[11]  Halim Yanikomeroglu,et al.  Moving Aerial Base Station Networks: A Stochastic Geometry Analysis and Design Perspective , 2019, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.

[12]  S. Hranilovic,et al.  Outage Capacity Optimization for Free-Space Optical Links With Pointing Errors , 2007, Journal of Lightwave Technology.

[13]  Luiz A. DaSilva,et al.  UAVs as Mobile Infrastructure: Addressing Battery Lifetime , 2018, IEEE Communications Magazine.

[14]  Harpreet S. Dhillon,et al.  3GPP-Inspired Stochastic Geometry-Based Mobility Model for a Drone Cellular Network , 2019, 2019 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM).

[15]  Bhaskar Saha,et al.  Battery health management system for electric UAVs , 2011, 2011 Aerospace Conference.

[16]  Rui Zhang,et al.  Energy-Efficient UAV Communication With Trajectory Optimization , 2016, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.