3-Dimensional Trajectory Optimization for UAV-Based Post-Disaster Data Collection

In Japan, natural disasters occur frequently. Serious disasters may cause damage to traffic networks and telecommunication infrastructures, leading to the occurrence of isolated disaster areas. In this article, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are used for data collection instead of unavailable ground base stations in isolated disaster areas. Detailed information about the damage situation will be collected from the user equipments (UE) by a UAV through a fly-hover-fly procedure, and then will be sent to the disaster response headquarters for disaster relief. However, mission completion time minimization becomes a crucial task, considering the requirement of rapid response and the battery constraint of UAVs. Therefore, the author proposed a 3-dimentional UAV flight trajectory, discussing the optimal flight altitude and placement of hovering points by transforming the problem to a location set cover problem (LSCP). The simulation results have shown the feasibility of the proposed method to reduce the mission completion time.