Joint 3D Deployment and Power Allocation for VLC-enabled UAVs with High Energy Efficiency

Robotic vehicles are increasingly seen as key technologies for achieving the goal of sustainable development. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), in particular, offer the potential for flexible deployment and broad communication coverage, while low energy efficiency (EE) restricts the endurance. Therefore, this study investigates the visible light communication (VLC)-enabled UAV system, which provides both high achievable data rates and enhanced EE. To this end, we establish a comprehensive system model that accounts for interference from neighboring UAVs. Besides, the overall EE is maximized, which improves the utilization of on-board battery energy and promotes sustainability. Moreover, the EE maximization problem is formulated under various constraints and decomposed into two subproblems, three-dimensional (3D) deployment and power allocation. In addition, a block coordinate descent (BCD)-based algorithm is employed to solve them iteratively. Furthermore, simulation results highlight the significant EE enhancements compared to other baselines, while also demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed BCD algorithm under different scenarios.