Maximizing Sum Rate by Joint Control and Communication Scheduling for RIS-Assisted Cellular Connected UAV in THz Communications

Abstract

Terahertz (THz) communications have the potential to provide ultra-high transmission data rate for applications with high rate requirements, e.g., virtual reality, augmented reality, and autonomous vehicles. However, it is very easy to be blocked and misaligned for THz transmissions due to its ultra-high frequency and narrow beamwidth. To deal with the blocked issue, we adopt reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) assisted unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) to achieve seamless wide-area coverage with little or no human assistance. Furthermore, to deal with the misaligned issue in mobile RIS-assisted UAV scenarios, we propose a novel joint motion control and communication scheduling method in the aforementioned scenario, which can maximize the sum rate of all users while guaranteeing data rate requirement for each user and maintaining good motion control performance for UAV networks. Specifically, we first obtain a closed-form expression for data rate triggered motion control design, where both data rate requirement in THz communications and motion control performance of UA V are guaranteed. Then, the sum rate is maximized for all users based on the motion control performance. Simulation results show remarkable performance of the proposed method.