Joint position optimization, user association, and resource allocation for load balancing in UAV-assisted wireless networks

Abstract

Unbalanced traffic distribution in cellular networks results in congestion and degrades spectrum efficiency. To tackle this problem, we propose an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)-assisted wireless network in which the UAV acts as an aerial relay to divert some traffic from the overloaded cell to its adjacent underloaded cell. To fully exploit its potential, we jointly optimize the UAV position, user association, spectrum allocation, and power allocation to maximize the sum-log-rate of all users in two adjacent cells. To tackle the complicated joint optimization problem, we first design a genetic-based algorithm to optimize the UAV position. Then, we simplify the problem by theoretical analysis and devise a low-complexity algorithm according to the branch-and-bound method, so as to obtain the optimal user association and spectrum allocation schemes. We further propose an iterative power allocation algorithm based on the sequential convex approximation theory. The simulation results indicate that the proposed UAV-assisted wireless network is superior to the terrestrial network in both utility and throughput, and the proposed algorithms can substantially improve the network performance in comparison with the other schemes.