Multi-source cooperative communications using multiple small relay UAVs

Small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have found wide use in civilian and military applications. One of the important applications is to relay information in an obstructed line-of-sight environment so as to maintain reliable wireless communication links between users which are difficult to directly communicate to each other. The use of multiple networked UAVs as relay nodes can further enhance spectral and link connectivity. In this paper, we consider a multi-source cooperative communication system in which a number of small UAVs are used to relay the source signals to the destination nodes in a decode-and-forward manner. We analyze the outage probability at the relay UAVs and at the destination in a Rician fading environment. The use of single and multiple antennas at the destination node is considered and their respective performance is examined. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed cooperative UAVs schemes.