Join trajectory optimization and communication design for UAV-enabled OFDM networks

Abstract Due to the advantages of high mobility, flexible maneuverability and fast deployment, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), which can be usually served as aerial communication platform, not only supports information transmission in the Internet of things (IoT), but also provides reliable power supplement for low-power wireless devices. Considering an UAV-enabled Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) network where subcarriers are divided into two groups for information transmission and energy harvesting, respectively, a joint UAV trajectory optimization and communication design scheme is proposed based on Simultaneous Wireless Information and Power Transfer (SWIPT) technology. Under the given average harvested energy for users, the objective of the scheme is to maximize the average achievable rate for all users by jointly optimizing UAV trajectory, user scheduling, subcarrier and power allocation. To solve the formulated optimization problem, it is transformed into two subproblems to optimize resource allocation and UAV trajectory, respectively. The former is a mixed integer non-convex optimization problem. To solve it, a three-variable alternative iteration algorithm is proposed to obtain the optimal user scheduling, subcarrier and power allocation. Since the latter is non-convex, it can be transformed into convex optimization problem by relaxing objective function and constraint to obtain the optimal trajectory. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm has good convergence and the proposed UAV-enabled OFDM network has better performance.