Autonomous Vision-Aided UAV Positioning for Obstacle-Aware Wireless Connectivity

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) offer a promising solution for enhancing wireless connectivity and Quality of Service (QoS) in urban environments, acting as aerial Wi-Fi access points or cellular base stations to support vehicular users and Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) applications. Their flexibility and rapid deployment capabilities make them suitable for addressing infrastructure gaps and traffic surges. However, optimizing UAV positions to maintain Line of Sight (LoS) links with ground User Equipment (UEs) remains challenging in obstacle-dense urban scenarios. Existing approaches rely on probabilistic blockage models or require dedicated infrastructure such as Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces. This paper proposes VTOPA, a Vision-Aided Traffic- and Obstacle-Aware Positioning Algorithm that complements these approaches by autonomously extracting environmental information—such as obstacle geometries and UE locations—via computer vision, enabling infrastructure-free deployment. The algorithm employs Particle Swarm Optimization to determine UAV positions that maximize aggregate throughput while prioritizing LoS connectivity and accounting for heterogeneous traffic demands. VTOPA is particularly suited for rapid deployment scenarios such as emergency response and temporary events. Evaluated through simulations in ns-3, VTOPA achieves up to 50% increase in aggregate throughput and 50% reduction in delay, outperforming state of the art benchmarks in obstacle-rich environments.