Performance Analysis of UAV-Assisted Short-Packet Cooperative Communications

In this paper, we give performance analysis in an unmanned-aerial-vehicle (UAV) assisted ground short-packet communication system, which adopts a UAV as a wireless relay to accomplish ultra-reliable and low-latency communications (URLLC) between a base station and a user equipment (UE). Both large-scale fading, which is modeled as the free space path loss or the classic 3-Dimensional channel, and small-scale fading, which follows Nakagami-$m$ distribution, are considered in our system model. We first derive the closed-form expressions for the average overall block error ratio (BLER) at the UE by adopting Gasssian-Legendre quadrature (GLQ) method. Then, under the reliability and latency constraints at the UE, we apply both bisection search and one-dimensional search algorithms to jointly optimize blocklength, transmit power and UAV flying height for maximizing the energy-efficiency (EE) of UAV. Finally, Monte-Carlo simulations are provided to verify our analytical results.