Both data ferrying with disruption-tolerant networking (DTN) and mobile cellular base stations constitute important techniques for UAV-aided communication in situations of crises where standard communication infrastructure is unavailable. For optimal use of a limited number of UAVs, we propose providing both DTN and a cellular base station on each UAV. Here, DTN is used for large amounts of low-priority data, while capacity-constrained cell coverage remains reserved for emergency calls or command and control. We optimize cell coverage via a novel optimal transport-based formulation using alternating minimization, while for data ferrying we periodically deliver data between dynamic clusters by solving quadratic assignment problems. In our evaluation, we consider different scenarios with varying mobility models and a wide range of flight patterns. Overall, we tractably achieve optimal cell coverage under quality-of-service costs with DTN-based data ferrying, enabling large-scale deployment of UAV swarms for crisis communication.

翻译：在危机通信场景中，容忍延迟网络的数据中继与移动蜂窝基站均为无人机辅助通信的重要技术手段。为优化有限数量无人机的使用效能，我们提出在每架无人机上同时部署容忍延迟网络与蜂窝基站方案。其中，容忍延迟网络用于传输大量低优先级数据，而容量受限的小区覆盖则保留给紧急呼叫或指挥控制通信。通过基于最优传输理论的新型交替最小化框架优化小区覆盖，同时针对数据中继任务，采用求解二次分配问题的方法在动态集群间定期传递数据。在评估中，我们考虑了不同移动模型与多样化飞行模式的场景。总体而言，我们在保证服务质量成本的前提下，通过基于容忍延迟网络的数据中继实现了可处理的最优小区覆盖，从而支持大规模无人机集群在危机通信中的部署应用。