Providing wireless coverage in massively crowded events using UAVs

Ahmad Sawalmeh, Noor Shamsiah Othman, Hazim Shakhatreh, Abdallah Khreishah

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

19 Scopus citations

Abstract

Al-Hajj or pilgrimage is one of the biggest special events in the world; millions of pilgrims visit Mecca every year to perform the rituals of Hajj. The main challenge in this event is the huge number of pilgrims; therefore, terrestrial base stations overloading happen and it is not possible to provide a wireless coverage to all pilgrims. An innovative solution to manage this problem is to use Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as an aerial base stations to assist terrestrial cellular networks. In Al-Hajj, there are two types of users, indoor and outdoor users. In this paper, we propose using UAVs to provide wireless coverage for all users simultaneously in massively crowded events (such as pilgrimage). The existing Air to Ground and Outdoor-to-Indoor path loss models are utilized to study the problem of UAV placement with objective of minimizing the UAV transmit power. In order to find an efficient placement for UAV, we use Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and K-means with ternary search (KTS) algorithms. The simulation results show that the PSO algorithm provides better performance compared to KTS algorithm in finding the efficient UAV placement. More specifically, the employment of PSO algorithm requires less than transmit power by a factor of 5x compared to the KTS algorithm.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication2017 IEEE 13th Malaysia International Conference on Communications, MICC 2017
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages158-163
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9781538631324
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 2 2017
Event13th IEEE Malaysia International Conference on Communications, MICC 2017 - Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia
Duration: Nov 28 2017Nov 30 2017

Publication series

Name2017 IEEE 13th Malaysia International Conference on Communications, MICC 2017
Volume2017-November

Other

Other13th IEEE Malaysia International Conference on Communications, MICC 2017
Country/TerritoryMalaysia
CityJohor Bahru, Johor
Period11/28/1711/30/17

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Instrumentation
  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Information Systems and Management

Keywords

  • Air to Ground path loss model
  • K-means algorithm
  • Outdoor-to-Indoor path loss model
  • Particle Swarm Optimization
  • Ternary search algorithm
  • Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

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