Reflections in the Sky: Millimeter Wave Communication with UAV-Carried Intelligent Reflectors

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In this paper, a novel approach that uses an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-carried intelligent reflector (IR) is proposed to enhance the performance of millimeter wave (mmW) networks.

• In particular, the UAV-IR is used to intelligently reflect mmW beamforming signals from a base station towards a mobile outdoor user, while harvesting energy from mmW signals to power the IR.
• To maintain a line-of-sight (LOS) channel, a reinforcement learning (RL) approach, based on Q-learning and neural networks, is proposed to model the propagation environment, such that the location and reflection coefficient of the UAV-IR can be optimized to maximize the downlink transmission capacity.
• Simulation results show a significant advantage for using a UAV-IR over a static IR, in terms of the average data rate and the achievable downlink LOS probability.