Double Deep Q-Network Method for Energy Efficiency and Throughput in a UAV-Assisted Terrestrial Network

Increasing the coverage and capacity of cellular networks by deploying additional base stations is one of the fundamental objectives of fifth-generation (5G) networks. However, it leads to performance degradation and huge spectral consumption due to the massive densification of connected devices and simultaneous access demand. To meet these access conditions and improve Quality of Service, resource allocation (RA) should be carefully optimized. Traditionally, RA problems are nonconvex optimizations, which are performed using heuristic methods, such as genetic algorithm, particle swarm optimization, and simulated annealing. However, the application of these approaches remains computationally expensive and unattractive for dense cellular networks. Therefore, artificial intelligence algorithms are used to improve traditional RA mechanisms. Deep learning is a promising tool for addressing resource management problems in wireless communication. In this study, we investigate a double deep Q-network-based RA framework that maximizes energy efficiency (EE) and total network throughput in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-assisted terrestrial networks. Specifically, the system is studied under the constraints of interference. However, the optimization problem is formulated as a mixed integer nonlinear program. Within this framework, we evaluated the effect of height and the number of UAVs on EE and throughput. Then, in accordance with the experimental results, we compare the proposed algorithm with several artificial intelligence methods. Simulation results indicate that the proposed approach can increase EE with a considerable throughput. © 2023 CRL Publishing. All rights reserved.