Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) relay system has received significant attention in future wireless communications. In this article, the ergodic sum rate of a multisource multidestination UAV relaying is investigated. Here, an UAV with multiple antennas is deployed as an aerial relay using threshold-based decode-and-forward protocol to assist signal transmission from multiple sources to their intended destinations simultaneously. By considering the effect of path loss, we first obtain the output signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio expression for the considered system. Then, we propose a statistical channel state information based beamforming (SCSI-BF) scheme to maximize the system ergodic sum rate, where both of the uplink and downlink channels are subject to correlated Rayleigh fading. Furthermore, we derive the analytical expression for the ergodic sum rate of the considered system with the SCSI-BF scheme. Finally, numerical results are given to demonstrate the superiority of the SCSI-BF scheme and the validity of the theoretical analysis, and show the impact of various parameters on the system performance.
INTRODUCTIONUnmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have also shown broad application prospects in the field of wireless communication due to its advantages such as low cost, easy deployment, and control. [1][2][3] Especially, in remote areas and marine communications, the line of sight (LoS) is not always available due to the long distance or obstacles. Therefore, the high-altitude relay platform can be used to establish a reliable communication link. Although satellite communication can be considered as an effective solution in this situation, [4][5][6][7] in some civil communications, it is difficult to be widely used due to the high costs of construction and maintenance. Therefore, UAV-based wireless communication technology has received more and more attention. 8,9
Related worksUAVs have been deployed as aerial base stations to provide better network coverage and more reliable communication. 10,11 Especially, in urban areas where traffic overloading often occurs or in rural areas where fixed ground infrastructure is not cost-effective. 12,13 There are also a number of surveys on UAV communication over the past few years, which are discussed here to prove the uniqueness of this survey.