Density-aware deployment with multi-layer UAV-V2X communication networks

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-assisted communications have been regarded as a promising technology, which can be used in dynamic heterogeneous networks, since the UAVs can be applied as mobile base stations (MBSs). It is more efficient to set the UAVs as MBSs in different layers according to their functions. Due to the ability in communicating with other vehicles or facilities, vehicle-to-everything (V2X) makes the information required by the vehicles be efficiently transmitted and processed, so as to increase the safety of driving. However, because of the rapid change of topology and the huge demand of data transmission, it is hard to guarantee the efficient coverage of all the vehicles only by the support of terrestrial wireless communication networks. Considering this, this study combines UAV and V2X communications together, and proposes a multi-layer aerial-road vehicular (MLARV) architecture. The UAVs in the higher layer are in charge of overall monitoring, while the UAVs in the lower layer are responsible for hot-spot area coverage. To solve the throughput maximisation problem, the authors further propose a density-aware deployment (DAD) scheme with an iterative three-dimensional matching resource allocation algorithm. Simulation results show that the proposed DAD scheme with the MLARV architecture outperforms the traditional UAV-assisted V2X communications with single layer architecture.