Energy-Efficient Deployment of a Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access Unmanned
Aerial System
Abstract
In this work, we propose a methodology for the energy-efficient
placement of an unmanned aerial system (UAS) deployed to collect data
from a set of ground user equipments (UEs). The data-communication
between the UEs and the UxNB, a radio access node carried by an unmanned
aerial vehicle (UAV), of the UAS follows a non-orthogonal
multiple-access (NOMA) scheme; in which all the UEs share the same time
and frequency resources. The receiver removes the inter-UE interference
from the co-channel UEs through joint implementation of a powerreduction
technique at the UEs and the successive interference cancellation (SIC)
at the receiver. Firstly, a new energy-efficiency metric, area energy
efficiency (AEE) representing the total area covered by a UxNB per
Watt-Hour (Wh) of energy consumed, is introduced. Then, the optimal
hovering altitude of the UxNB that maximizes the AEE is determined using
the proposed algorithm. Numerical evaluations show that the obtained
solution using the proposed algorithm matches the globally optimal
solution, and the proposed NOMA scheme prevails over an equivalent
orthogonal multiple access (OMA) scheme, in terms of the AEE.