Modeling multiple unmanned aerial vehicles placement problem in ad hoc network via quadratic unconstrained binary optimization

This paper addresses an important issue in ad hoc network connectivity using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as relay nodes and formulates the problem of locating UAVs in the network as a facility location problem. We propose a method to reformulate the facility location problem using quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) and solve the QUBO model with off-shelf software. The analysis of the solutions produced by QUBO along with comparisons made with the linear model highlights both the attractiveness and robustness of the proposed approach.