Performance Analysis of UAV-Assisted Wireless Powered Sensor Network over Shadowed κ − μ Fading Channels

In this work, we analyze performances of the unmanned aerial vehicle- (UAV-) assisted wireless powered sensor communication, where sensor transmission ability is supported by the UAV. Harvested energy from the UAV-broadcasted signal is further used at the sensor nodes for uplink information transmission to the UAV, over assumed shadowed fading channels. Here, we observe a general scenario in which due to the flight conditions of the UAV, the channel’s content include the LOS components affected by the shadowing effect, modeled by the general shadowed channel model, which can be reduced to other well-known channel models as its special cases. We derive closed-form expressions for the outage probability (OP) of such wireless sensor network (WSN) operating in shadowed fading environments. Further, we analyze the optimization of time allocation to minimize OP subjected to UAV’s energy constraints. The impact of channel parameters on observed performance measures is analyzed, and obtained results are numerically validated.