UAV Mobility model for dynamic UAV-to-car communications in 3D environments

In scenarios where there is a lack of reliable infrastructures to support car-to-car communications, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) can be deployed as mobile infrastructures. However, the UAVs should be deployed at adequate location and heights to maintain the coverage throughout time as the irregularities of the terrain may have a significant impact on the radio signals sent to distribute information. So, flight altitude and location should be constantly adjusted in order to avoid hilly or mountainous terrains that might hinder the Line-of-Sight (LOS). In this paper, we propose a three-dimensional mobility model to define the movement of the UAV so as to maintain good coverage levels in terms of communications with moving ground vehicles by taking into account the elevation information of the Earth’s surface and the signal power towards the different vehicles. The results showed that our proposed model is able to extend the times with connectivity between the UAV and the cars compared to a simpler two-dimensional model, which never considers the altitude, and a static model, which maintains the same UAV position from the beginning to the end of the experiment.