Joint Radio Resource Allocation, 3D Placement and User Association of Aerial Base Stations in IoT Networks

In this paper, a novel method for joint radio resource allocation (RRA), three-dimensional placement (3DP), and user association of aerial base stations (ABSs) as a main problem in the internet of things (IoT) networks is proposed. In our proposed model, we consider two schemes: a) line of sight (LoS) b) generalized. In the LoS scheme, all the ABSs should see the IoT users as LoS. In the generalized scheme, ABSs can see some of the IoT users as LoS and some of them as NLoS. The main goal of this paper is to minimize the overal transmit power of the IoT users while satisfying some quality of service (QoS) constraints in uplink scenario. To solve the optimization problems and to convert the main problems with high complexity into the subproblems with lower complexity, we decompose them into two subproblems namely 3DP subproblem and joint RRA and user association (JRU) subproblem. The methods which we use to solve our proposed optimization problems are Semi Definite Relaxation (SDR) and Geometric Programming (GP). Finally, using simulations, we evaluate the performance of the proposed schemes for different values of the network parameters.