Owing to their high energy efficiency, fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles
(UAVs) can operate as aerial relays to provide long periods of uninterrupted
connectivity. In such systems, however, airframe shadowing may occur (i.e. the
blockage of a UAV communication link by the UAV’s own airframe) and can
significantly degrade the communications performance. In this work, we propose a
novel approach to optimize the trajectory of a fixed-wing UAV operating as a
relay between a ground user (GU) and a ground base station (BS) to maximize the
relay efficiency (defined as the ratio of the amount of relayed data to the
consumed energy). We use the aerodynamic equations of the fixed-wing UAV to
derive a semi-deterministic airframe shadowing model for loitering trajectories.
Analytical expressions and simulation results illustrate the dependence of the
airframe shadowing on the UAV’s attitude and speed.

Link to paper:
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/10092833

Standard seminar length ~ 40 min talk, 20 min discussion