Spectrum and Energy Efficiency in Dynamic UAV-Powered Millimeter Wave Networks

This letter investigates a dynamic scheme to analyze and optimize unmanned-aerial-vehicle-(UAV)-to-ground millimeter-wave (MMW) networks. First, a downlink energy transfer is proposed, followed by the uplink information transfer process between the UAV base stations (BSs) and a ground Internet of things (IoT) network. The UAVs fly above the ground IoT network in the energy transfer phase with the dynamic regulation to minimize the path loss fading. Afterwards, the ground-based IoT devices use the received energy to transmit the uplink information using vertical links. The UAV BSs are modeled with gain from multiple three-dimensional uniform linear antenna arrays. After deriving new statistical properties, we analyze the spectrum efficiency and energy efficiency for the system. Our numerical results have shown that the dynamic scheme in UAV-to-ground IoT networks provides great advantages than a traditional static deployment.