UAVs as Mobile Infrastructure: Addressing Battery Lifetime

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are expected to play an important role in next generation cellular networks, acting as flying infrastructure which can serve ground users when regular infrastructure is overloaded or unavailable. As these devices are expected to operate wirelessly they will rely on an internal battery for their power supply, which will limit the amount of time they can operate over an area of interest before having to recharge. In this article, we outline three battery charging options that may be considered by a network operator and use simulations to demonstrate the performance impact of incorporating those options into a cellular network where UAV infrastructure provides wireless service.