Concept study of an autonomous aerial mobile network relay for pre-hospital emergency care

Abstract

This paper presents a prototype for an aerial mobile network relay in the setting of pre-hospital emergency care. The requirements for such an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) are summarized and used to develop a hardware prototype. Gaussian processes and Bayesian optimization are implemented to find an optimal location for the aerial relay. The aerial relay enhances the network throughput by a factor of up to 7.2 in comparison to a relay on the ground. The findings show that UAV-based relays have the potential to play a vital role in emergency rescue.