Feedback based Mobility Control Algorithm for Maximizing Node Coverage by Drone Base Stations

Abstract: Drone base stations (DBSs) have recently gained wide popularity as a possible solution to provide wireless connectivity in a variety of scenarios, for example, in inaccessible terrains such as connectivity over vast areas of a water body or in rural areas where the physical deployment of base stations is not feasible at the moment, also in the case of terrestrial infrastructure failure where DBSs can be rapidly deployed to re-establish communication channel. In this paper we propose an algorithm for controlling the motion of the DBSs which maximizes the number of DBS to mobile ground node connections. The overlap extent between the drones is limited to reduce the count of redundant connections. The overall approach aims at minimizing the number of drones required to be deployed in a given region by maximizing connectivity per drone.