Optimal Deployment and Operation of Robotic Aerial 6G Small Cells with Grasping End Effectors

Although airborne base stations (ABSs) mounted on drones show a significant potential to enhance network capacity and coverage due to their flexible deployment, the system performance is limited by the endurance of the on-board battery. To overcome this key shortcoming, we are exploring robotic airborne base station (RABS) with energy neutral grasping end-effectors able to autonomously perch at tall urban landforms. To this end, we propose novel integer linear programming (ILP) optimization models and computational efficient reformulation by proving total unimodularity problem structure to allow optimal deployment and operation of robotic small cells based on the spatio-temporal characteristics of underlying traffic demand from end-users. A wide set of numerical investigations reveal that a single robotic aerial small cell is able to outperform five (5) fixed small cells in terms of served user generated traffic within a 16 to 41 hours period. This is because robotic aerial small cell is able to alter its location based on actual traffic demand rather than on average values used for fixed small cell network deployment.