UAV-Enabled Short-Packet Communication via Fluid Antenna Systems

2026-02-05

AI Summary

This work addresses the challenge of achieving both energy efficiency and reliability in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-assisted short-packet communications within complex urban environments, where channel blockage, path loss, and operational overhead of fluid antenna systems pose significant constraints. The authors propose a novel UAV communication framework leveraging fluid antenna relaying, incorporating—for the first time—the time and energy costs of port selection into the optimization model. They derive a closed-form expression for the block error rate under spatially correlated Nakagami‑m fading channels and jointly optimize UAV altitude and antenna port configuration to maximize energy efficiency. Through eigenvalue-based channel modeling, high-SNR asymptotic analysis, and a hierarchical optimization algorithm, the study reveals non-trivial optimal trade-offs between the number of ports, deployment height, and channel conditions. Simulations confirm the model’s accuracy and demonstrate that moderate port allocation substantially enhances both system energy efficiency and reliability.

Technology Category

• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Optimization of Spatio-temporal Systems
• Reasoning under Uncertainty: Stochastic Optimization
• Intelligent Robots: Learning & Optimization for ROB

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Energy management for devices in mobile Web and WoT environments
• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Efficient manipulation of static and dynamic Web-related graphs
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Incentives in network design for Web infrastructures and ecosystems

Abstract

This paper develops a framework for analyzing UAV-enabled short-packet communication, leveraging fluid antenna system (FAS)-assisted relaying networks. Operating in the short-packet regime and focusing on challenging urban environments, we derive novel, closed-form expressions for the block error rate (BLER). This is achieved by modeling the spatially correlated Nakagami-$m$ fading link via a tractable eigenvalue-based approach. A high-signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) asymptotic analysis is also presented, revealing the system's fundamental diversity order. Building on this analysis, we formulate a novel energy efficiency (EE) maximization problem that, unlike idealized models, uniquely incorporates the non-trivial time and energy overheads of FAS port selection. An efficient hierarchical algorithm is proposed to jointly optimize key system parameters. Numerical results validate our analysis, demonstrating that while FAS provides substantial power gains, the operational overhead creates a critical trade-off. This trade-off dictates an optimal number of FAS ports and a non-trivial optimal UAV deployment altitude, governed by the balance between blockage and path loss. This work provides key insights for FAS-aided UAV communications.

Problem

• UAV
• short-packet communication
• fluid antenna system
• energy efficiency
• block error rate

Innovation

• Fluid Antenna System
• Short-Packet Communication
• UAV Relaying
• Block Error Rate
• Energy Efficiency Optimization