Optimization Methods for Resource Allocation in UAVs-Assisted Terrestrial Networks: A Survey

Abstract

With the inception of the sixth generation of mobile communication (6G), fundamental changes in network architecture and performance have emerged. For instance, the traditional terrestrial networks can no more satisfy diverse requirements of humans owing to the limitations of coverage area, high cost of hardware expenses among others. In the contemporary era, UAVs have already been applied to traditional networks in an effort to compensate disadvantages mentioned above. Optimization of resource allocation is one of the most significant areas in networks. Therefore, the survey sets up a model for terrestrial networks assisted with UAVs and introduces several indicators for performance evaluation including throughput, spectrum resource utilization and time complexity. In the meanwhile, representative works are illustrated according to the types of resources, such as spectrum resources, power resources, computing resources. Finally, several challenges and expectations are put forward, including hardware limitations of UAVs, security of information transmission, and integrated sensing and communication (ISAC).