UAV-Assisted Cooperative Vehicular Communication: Modelling, Optimization, and Performance Analysis

In beyond 5G (B5G) wireless networks, the Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are being used as flying base stations (BSs) to help ease strain on communication networks during peak traffic or when network outages occur. In this work, a hybrid communication model is proposed where a UAV serves as an aerial base station to facilitate Vehicular communication. This allows vehicles in non-line-of-sight (NLoS) regions to stay connected using cooperative relaying. The proposed model considers mobility of the vehicles, social proximity, and the dynamic transmission characteristics of the channels while incorporating the cooperative intercommunication between the UAV and Vehicles. Mathematical expressions have been derived to determine the successful service probability (SSP), and the outage analysis (OA) is done for both U2V and V2V transmissions. An optimization problem has been formulated to improve overall service reliability by identifying the ideal altitude for the UAV. The Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm is used for finding the optimal height of the UAV, along with the SINR threshold. The simulation results validate the analytical findings, demonstrating that the proposed cooperative U2V-V2V technique significantly improves network coverage, lowers outage probability, and improves network reliability as compared to traditional UAV deployment methods.