Dynamic Resource Management for RSMA-Enabled UAV Networks With Mobile Users

Rate Splitting Multiple Access (RSMA) provides an efficient method for allocating communication resources to improve spectral efficiency. This paper focuses on RSMA-based UAV networks, where the UAV serves mobile ground users (GUs). The main challenge is the random movement of GUs, which causes unpredictable changes in user locations and communication conditions. In this paper, we aim to minimize the UAV's total energy consumption while ensuring each GU meets its throughput requirement. To achieve this, we optimize the UAV's trajectory, RSMA common transmission rate, and power allocation. Due to the time-varying nature of user mobility and the non-convexity of the optimization problem, we apply Lyapunov optimization to convert it into a online weighted energy- throughput minimization problem for each time slot. By introducing virtual queues to represent throughput constraints, we balance UAV throughput and energy consumption. The online optimization problem is then decomposed into two subproblems: UAV trajectory design and RSMA common rate/power allocation, where we use successive convex approximation (SCA) to address the non-convex constraints. The simulation outcomes demonstrate that our proposed method considerably exceeds benchmark approaches, reducing the system's energy usage while fulfilling throughput requirements.