Unmanned aerial vehicle set covering problem considering fixed-radius coverage constraint

This paper models the problem of providing an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based wireless network in a disaster area as a set covering problem that takes into consideration the operational constraints and benefits of UAVs. The research presents a branch-and-price algorithm and two approximation models of the quadratic coverage radius constraint in a simple discretization and a linear pairwise-conflict constraint based on Jung's theorem. In computational experiments, we found that the exact branch-and-price algorithm and two approximation models are applicable for realistic-scaled problems with up to 100 demand points and 2,000 m of coverage radius. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.