Drone-assisted public safety wireless broadband network

Abstract

A nationwide interoperable public safety wireless broadband network is being planned by the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet) under the auspices of the United States government. The public safety network shall provide the needed wireless coverage in the wake of an incident or a disaster. This paper proposes a drone-assisted multi-hop device-to-device (D2D) communication scheme as a means to extend the network coverage over regions where it is difficult to deploy a landbased relay. The resource are shared using either time division or frequency division scheme. Efficient algorithms are developed to compute the optimal position of the drone for maximizing the data rate, which are shown to be highly effective via simulations.