Energy Efficiency Optimization in UAV-Aided Maritime Communications

• Published in: Electronics (Basel) Vol. 14; no. 12; p. 2357
• Main Authors: Xin, Yuanxue, Zhao, Wenqiang, Zhang, Jun, Shi, Pengfei
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 09.06.2025
• Subjects: Algorithms; Communications systems; Drone aircraft; Energy consumption; Energy efficiency; Energy management systems; Energy use; Flight; Mathematical programming; Optimization; Satellite communications; Sparsity; Trajectories; Unmanned aerial vehicles; Velocity
• ISSN: 2079-9292; 2079-9292
• DOI: 10.3390/electronics14122357

In this paper, we study an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-enabled maritime communication system, where a single rotary-wing UAV is dispatched to communicate with multiple moving vessel users. We formulate the energy efficiency optimization problem with a propulsion energy consumption model by jointly considering the UAV transmit power, flight trajectory, and flight velocity. The problem is a non-convex fractional programming problem, which makes it difficult to obtain the optimal solution. To solve this problem, we propose an efficient algorithm utilizing the successive convex approximation techniques and Dinkelbach (SCAD) algorithm. In particular, we divide the original problem into three involved sub-problems that can be solved by adopting alternate optimization. In order to satisfy the constraint of maximum UAV flight velocity, we obtain a modified flight trajectory by matching the UAV positions. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme which effectively improves the energy efficiency for UAV communication. Meanwhile, the SCAD shows an outstanding performance in terms of energy efficiency for a long-duration flight.