User Association and Power Control for UAV-Enabled Cellular Networks

Abstract

A joint user association (UA) and power control (PC) framework is presented for downlink transmission in cellular networks featuring a macro base station (BS) and a collection of unmanned aerial vehicle BSs. The problem is presented as a nonconvex optimization problem in which the aim is to maximize the network utility by taking into account the PC, load balancing, and user fairness. The UA problem is modeled as a many-to-one matching game followed by a coalition game. An iterative power allocation algorithm based on successive convex approximation is presented to improve the network utility. The results show an improvement over traditional approaches that assign users to BSs based on maximum signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio.