Yan, Hua (2021) UAV-enabled wireless power transfer and communications. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been considered as a promising technology in both military and civil communications. This thesis studies UAV-enabled wireless communications considering UAV propulsion consumption which has not been well studied in the existing literature.
To this end, first, wireless power transfer (WPT) efficiency in UAV-enabled wireless powered communication networks (WPCNs) is studied, where a rotarywing UAV is dispatched as an energy carrier to charge the remote sensors after it is charged by a charging station such as a base station (BS). In the study, the propulsion consumption for different UAV manoeuvres has been taken into account. Two schemes for UAV-enabled WPT have been proposed and compared with the conventional scheme without using a UAV. By solving the energy equations, a distance threshold beyond which the new schemes show superiority over the conventional scheme is derived.

Then, in order to maximize the sum-energy received by all sensors, the optimal strategy for UAV deployment is studied. In this study, the UAV power consumption, the radio frequency to direct current (RF-to-DC) energy conversion effciency and the BS charging process have all been taken into account. Both one-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) topologies of sensors have been considered. By maximizing the sum-energy received by all sensors, the optimal locations for the UAV have been derived.

Next, the use of UAVs in a WPCN as an energy transmitter and a data collector is investigated. In the study, the UAV is first charged from a BS before it flies to the sensors for data collection. Upon arrival, the UAV first charges the sensors via WPT in the down-link, followed by data transmission from the sensors in the up-link. After that, the UAV ies back to the BS to offload data to the BS. Both distance-dependent path loss and small-scale fading are considered. To maximize the amount of data offloaded to the BS given a fixed total time, the optimal time allocation in different phases has been derived.

In the aforementioned studies, we focus on the full process of UAV-enabled WPCN where wireless charging from the BS to the UAV and the UAV return trip have been considered. To maximize the available energy when the UAV arrives at destinations, the optimum battery weight in UAV-enabled wireless communication networks is studied. Numerical results show that both vertical flight and horizontal flight speeds and the gross weight of the UAV have a great impact on the optimal battery weight.

Motivated by studying the optimal battery weight, it is found that accurate and convenient energy consumption models (ECM) for rotary-wing UAVs are also, or even much more important for UAV-enabled wireless communications because energy is the guarantee of UAV operation. As a result, a simple and easy-to-use model with closed-form expression as a function of the initial velocity, acceleration and time duration is further studied. Numerical results show the validity and reliability of the new derived ECM.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	T Technology > TK Electrical engineering. Electronics Nuclear engineering T Technology > TL Motor vehicles. Aeronautics. Astronautics
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Drone aircraft, Wireless power transmission, Wireless communication systems, Energy consumption, Energy harvesting
Official Date:	September 2021
Dates:	Date Event September 2021 UNSPECIFIED
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	School of Engineering
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Chen, Yunfei, 1976- ; Yang, Shuang-Hua
Sponsors:	Southern University of Science and Technology
Format of File:	pdf
Extent:	xxiii, 222 leaves : illustrations
Language:	eng

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