UAVs deployment in heterogeneous networks: enhancing video streaming QoE

Abstract—In recent years, the use of UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) to boost mobile networking technology performance is rising interest in the scientific community. UAVs can be used as aerial relays to be deployed in 4G/LTE networks. Small scale UAVs, such as quadrotors or small fixed wing drones, are able to carry a wide variety of sensors, actuators and communication equipments. Due to the increasing interest in this field, UAVs have become more and more affordable and even off-the-shelf quadrotor UAVs can carry >1 kg equipments in their structure. In parallel, the miniaturization of commercial femto cells results in the development of very lightweight network equipments. The combination of UAVs and cellular network equipments provides an interesting approach towards the enhancement of performance of a network. In our view, UAVs are seen as an additional service that can be provided in order to ensure a higher Quality of Experience for video streaming users. The work focuses on the study of a system model with specific parameters and constraints in order to embed a UAV functioning as an LTE micro-cell to perform user offloading and optimize the bandwidth usage of a macrocell during video streaming. The result is a new architecture, that can be framed as Heterogeneous Network.