An improved affinity propagation method for maximising system sum rate and minimising interference for 3D multi‐UAV placement in disaster area

Abstract In emergencies where several ground base stations (GBS) are no longer available, mobile base stations based on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can efficiently resolve coverage issues in remote areas due to their cost‐effectiveness and versatility. Natural disasters, such as a deluge, cause damage to the terrestrial wireless infrastructure. The main challenge in these systems is to determine the optimal 3D placement of UAVs to meet the dynamic demand of users and minimise interference. Various mathematical frameworks and efficient algorithms are suggested for designing, optimising, and deploying UAV‐based communication systems. This paper investigates the challenges of 3D UAV placement through machine learning (ML) and enhanced affinity propagation (EAP). Lastly, the simulation results indicate that the proposed approach improves the system sum rate, interference, and coverage performance compared to DBSCAN, k‐means, and k‐means++ methods. Therefore, this paper identifies UAVs' most effective 3D placement, including minimising the number of UAVs, maximising the number of covered users, and maximising the system sum rate for an arbitrary distribution of users in the disaster area. Additionally, this paper addresses the issue of interference minimisation.