Initial Placement Optimization for Multi-channel UAV Networks

International audience; Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) can be used to deploy communication networks by acting as access points for ground users. Taking advantage of the lightness and the high maneuverability of drones, such a network can be implemented quickly and inexpensively in situations where network infrastructures are damaged or overloaded (emergency situations), or nonexistent (wild life observation). To mitigate these issues, an off-loading network based on UAVs carrying radio access points was proposed in our previous work. The goal is to temporarily provide multiple services, voice, video, data, etc., over a specific zone. The design of the aerial network was formulated as a self-deployment method built on a Coulomb's law analogy where users and UAVs act as electrical charges. In this paper, we go beyond the proposed scheme by considering a multi-channel model taking into account the interference. We set up association and channel switching schemes that boost the overall performance of the network.