Aerial BS location optimization for monitoring multiple forest areas with uplink UAV throughput requirements

The increasing frequency and intensity of forest fires demand innovative technologies to support firefighting and mitigate their impact on ecosystems and communities. This paper explores the application of untethered and tethered uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) as aerial base station (ABS) in the context of forest fire management. We propose an ABS placement algorithm to serve UAV-user equipment (UE) in forest environments. The novelty of the proposed approach is to optimize the strategic ABS placement based on throughput requirements while serving multiple drone forest monitoring areas. We analyze and compare the performances of two aerial base stations (ABSs) such as an untethered ABS (UTABS) and a tethered ABS (TABS) for forest surveillance. We evaluate UTABS and TABS performances across single and multiple UAV-UE monitoring zones in forest environments under different network throughputs, wind effects, payload configurations, monitoring zone areas, communication frequencies, operating costs, etc. Our results indicate that while a UTABS offers superior flexibility, a TABS provides a cost-effective (78.2% reduction) and reliable solution to ensure long-term continuous forest fire surveillance operations.