Power-Efficient Deployment of a UAV for Emergency Indoor Wireless Coverage

In this paper, the problem of optimal placement of a single unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is studied, where the objective is to minimize the total transmit power required to provide wireless coverage for indoor users. Two cases of practical interest are considered, and efficient solutions to the formulated problem under these cases are presented. In the first case, the minimum transmit power required to cover the indoor users based on the location that has the maximum path loss inside the building is studied. We derive a functional relationship between the placement of the UAV and the dimensions of the building. In the second case, we assume that the locations of indoor users are randomly distributed inside the building. We propose to use an iterative algorithm and an exhaustive algorithm to optimize the placement of the UAV. We show that the minimum transmit power in the second case is much smaller than the transmit power in the first case. However, the equipment cost in the second case is relatively high. We validate the analysis by simulations and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms under different cases.