Energy model for UAV communications: Experimental validation and model generalization

Abstract

Wireless communication involving unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is expected to play an important role in future wireless networks. However, different from conventional terrestrial communication systems, UAVs typically have rather limited onboard energy on one hand, and require additional flying energy consumption on the other hand, which renders energyefficient UAV communication with smart energy expenditure of paramount importance. In this paper, via extensive flight experiments, we aim to firstly validate the recently derived theoretical energy model for rotary-wing UAVs, and then develop a general model for those complicated flight scenarios where rigorous theoretical model derivation is quite challenging, if not impossible. Specifically, we first investigate how UAV power consumption varies with its flying speed for the simplest straightand-level flight. With about 12,000 valid power-speed data points collected, we first apply the model-based curve fitting to obtain the modelling parameters based on the theoretical closed-form energy model in the existing literature. In addition, in order to exclude the potential bias caused by the theoretical energy model, the obtained measurement data is also trained using a modelfree deep neural network. It is found that the obtained curve from both methods can match quite well with the theoretical energy model. Next, we further extend the study to arbitrary 2-dimensional (2-D) flight, where, to our best knowledge, no rigorous theoretical derivation is available for the closed-form energy model as a function of its flying speed, direction, and acceleration. To fill the gap, we first propose a heuristic energy model for these more complicated cases, and then provide experimental validation based on the measurement results for circular level flight.

Resource optimization in UAV‐assisted wireless networks—A comprehensive survey

“…Statistical models for harvested energy considering solar power, wind power, and hybrid solar and wind power are proposed in Reference 77. A theoretical model for rotary‐wing UAV is validated in Reference 78. The authors then proposed a generalized heuristic energy model for 2D flight while considering UAV flying speed.…”

Energy Efficient UAV-Based Service Offloading Over Cloud-Fog Architectures

“…Then, we divide the total power consumption by the maximum flight distance permitted on a full battery to determine the amount of power consumed per meter. This method simplifies the modelling complexity however, interested reader can refer to [27], [60], and [61] for detailed power consumptions models based on empirical studies conducted on different UAV maneuvers such as horizontal, vertical, ascending and descending as well as the impact of payloads. For the communication induced power consumption of the UAV i.e., power consumed for sending and receiving data, we take a similar approach to the work in [62], which is based on the Friis free-space equation defined as follows:…”

Energy-Efficient UAV Communications: A Generalised Propulsion Energy Consumption Model

“…Note that (13) must hold with equalities to obtain the optimal solution to problem (12). Otherwise G k [n] can be increased to further reduce the objective value.…”

“…The PECM in [10] was improved in [11] by introducing the UAV's accerleration under the consideration of straight forward level flight. In [12], the authors generalized the PECM by considering the centrifugal acceleration and kinetic energy change over the given time duration, and extended the flight scenario to an arbitrary two-dimensional (2D) level flight. Based on the above proposed PECMs, there are also many works focusing on the trajectories designs of the UAVs to improve the energy efficiency (EE) of the UAV-enabled communication systems [13]- [15].…”