UAV Flight and Trajectory Control for Surveillance Camera Imaging and Wireless Communication Joint Optimization

This study investigates the joint optimization of camera control, target acquisition, trajectory planning, and transmission scheduling for surveillance uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) that provide various imaging and delivery services, such as traffic monitoring and security. The objective of the proposed UAV flight and trajectory control for surveillance camera imaging and communication (UTSCC) scheme is to capture images of designated ground targets and deliver the image data to requesting user equipment (UE) within specified deadlines. The UTSCC scheme attempts to maximize the total amount of successfully delivered target data considering realistic characteristics of the camera, UAV trajectory, transmission schedule, and selected targets. The developed framework makes decisions of the target acquisition and transmission scheduling using the exact penalty method (EPM) and applies non-convex optimization of the camera tilt angle and UAV trajectory using successive convex approximation (SCA) considering deadlines for UE delivery. The UTSCC scheme is designed to be practical for real-world UAV surveillance operations, where the simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms existing schemes in terms of delivery performance and overall system efficiency.