Communication coverage maximization in stadium environments using UAVs

Maximizing the communication coverage with the minimum number of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in a telecommunication system is investigated in this paper. In particular, the problem of maximizing the coverage area in stadium environments using UAVs is modeled mathematically as a multi-objective optimization problem. While the problem is solved using state-of-the-art solvers, to address the problem complexity and achieve the results for real-time applications, we propose a heuristic algorithm. The performance evaluation done in three crowding levels demonstrates that the performance with the heuristic algorithm is comparable to the mathematical model in terms of the number of coverage users. Moreover, the running time is significantly smaller in the proposed heuristic algorithm. This shows the efficiency of the model and solution. Moreover, we compare the heuristic algorithm with the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGAII). The results of the paper show that the use of the heuristic algorithm speeds up the processing and decision making, and at the same time maximizes the communication coverage in stadium environments.