Energy-Efficient Deployment of Airships for High Altitude Platforms: A Deterministic Annealing Approach

Nowadays, a promising solution to the demand for high capacity wireless services is provided by the high altitude platforms (HAPs), which can exploit the advantages of both satellites and terrestrial networks. However, due to the limited energy of the communication nodes on HAPs, energy-efficient deployment of airships for HAPs becomes increasingly important. In this paper, a heterogeneous network system comprising mission layer, HAP layer and satellite layer is presented. In the system, the mission space is partitioned according to the assumption of one-hop relay which guarantees that all the users are effectively covered by airships in HAP layer. Then, we model an expected energy consumption function of airships, which is minimized using deterministic annealing algorithm. Furthermore, the optimal solution to this approach is analyzed and proved. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method can get the goal of the minimum energy consumption and achieve a near optimal deployment of airships.