Overall and energy efficiency optimization for communication-oriented morphing solar-powered UAV

The high-altitude solar-powered unmanned aerial vehicle (SPUAV) offers incomparable advantages compared to other platforms, especially in enhancing aerial base stations, extending coverage to remote regions, supporting disaster response, and providing relay communication. However, the design feasible zones of SPUAVs are limited, requiring a coupling design of payload constraints and overall UAV characteristics. Focusing on the dual constraints of communication mission and UAV platform energy, this paper designed a morphing SPUAV, studying its overall design and optimization. Under the requirement of 24-hour energy closure while ensuring the mission’s effectiveness, the communication relay coverage was maximized. By establishing models for communication, solar irradiation, and mass prediction, setting energy balance constraints and communication constraints, and modeling optimization problems, the paper proposed a global optimization framework using a heuristic algorithm. The simulation results indicate that compared with the conventional configuration, the morphing SPUAV can significantly reduce total weight, especially under conditions of high altitude and heavy load, improving the overall effectiveness of the solution. Under simulation conditions, the total weight showed a 13.3% deduction. The improvement of communication payload specifications and the increase of cruise altitude can increase the coverage of relay communication but at the expense of increased total weight. When the communication payload is fixed, a low cruising altitude can improve the efficiency-to-cost ratio of communication coverage.