Movable Antenna-Enhanced UAV-to-UAV Communication With Full 3-D Coverage

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate a movable antenna (MA)-assisted uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) swarm communication system. Unlike conventional fixed-position antenna (FPA) systems, each UAV is equipped with an MA array distributed on two hemispherical surfaces at the head and tail, significantly expanding the spatial degrees of freedom (DoFs) in three-dimensional (3-D) seamless coverage. A far-field line-of-sight (LoS) channel model is adopted to characterize the UAV-to-UAV (U2U) communication links, incorporating both antenna positioning and radiation patterns. We formulate an achievable sum rate maximization problem by jointly optimizing the antenna position vectors (APVs) and transmit/receive beamforming vectors, subject to constraints on maximum transmit power, limited antenna moving region, and minimum inter-antenna spacing. To tackle this non-convex and highly coupled problem, we propose a two-loop iterative optimization algorithm that effectively combines the Spider Wasp Optimizer (SWO) for APV optimization and alternative optimization (AO) for beamforming design. Extensive simulation results demonstrate that the proposed MA-assisted scheme outperforms traditional FPA systems and other benchmark algorithms under various settings. The performance gains are attributed to the efficient optimization of antenna positions within the hemispherical moving region for interference suppression and coverage enhancement.