Optimal data scheduling of mobile clients serviced using beamforming antennas

The use of beamforming antennas has received significant attention over the last decade. We consider beamforming applied to dynamic operations such as networked UAV hubs which interconnect with users on the ground. The key problem involves scheduling these communications with users serviced by different beam patterns. This paper develops a linear program to optimally allocate time to beams for client specific traffic for such an application in order to maximize client throughput. It also incorporates l₁ norm regularization to help allocate time for non-linear factors such as beam-switching while still maintaining optimality. Furthermore this paper implements delay constraints and verifies the program´s performance. A shortest path first approach is presented that optimally schedules the order of the beam switches such that inter-switch delay, and associated protocol specific overhead, is minimized. We show how we implement, and then test, a multi-UAV scenario where the separate UAVs service their respective users while being interconnected in an ad hoc network. Finally, we present a working prototype implementation incorporating this work.