Energy-efficient maneuvering and communication of a single UAV-based relay

We focus on energy-efficient circular maneuvering and communication for a small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based relay, acting as a communication relay for connecting two stationary ground nodes. Based on an energy-efficiency metric, which is defined as the ratio of network capacity to the power consumption of both maneuvering and communication, we formulate an energy efficiency maximization problem with two variables: speed and load factor, of the UAV-based relay, and then obtain a closed-form suboptimal solution.