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A communication system based on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is a viable alternative for meeting the coverage and capacity needs of future wireless networks. However, because of the limitations of UAV-enabled communications in terms of coverage, energy consumption, and flying laws, the number of studies focused on the sustainability element of UAV-assisted networking in the literature was limited thus far. We present a solution to this problem in this study; specifically, we design a Q-learning-based UAV placement strategy for long-term wireless connectivity while taking into account major constraints such as altitude regulations, nonflight zones, and transmit power. The goal is to determine the best location for the UAV base station (BS) while reducing energy consumption and increasing the number of users covered. Furthermore, a weighting method is devised, allowing energy usage and the number of users served to be prioritized based on network/battery circumstances. The suggested Q-learning-based solution is contrasted to the standard k-means clustering method, in which the UAV BS is positioned at the centroid location with the shortest cumulative distance between it and the users. The results demonstrate that the proposed solution outperforms the baseline k-means clustering-based method in terms of the number of users covered while achieving the desired minimization of the energy consumption.

The fifth generation of mobile systems will rely on a dense deployment of small cells in order to meet its ambitious Key Performance Indicator targets. However, this dense deployment will result in a significant increase in the energy consumption of 5G networks, and thus, OPEX costs. Several small cell sleeping algorithms have been proposed in the literature but they require complex algorithms to decide when to switch on/off the small cells. On the basis of a distributed self-organizing approach, in this paper, we propose a low-cost, low-complexity small cell sleep scheduling algorithm to minimize the energy consumption of small cells in 5G and beyond networks. Our control utilizes a motion detection circuit to toggle the small cell between sleep and active modes based on the presence of a user. We evaluate the performance the algorithm on an experimental testbed and the results show that our algorithm achieves up to 20% reduction in energy consumption when compared to 'always on' approach.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)-based communication system is a promising solution to meet coverage and capacity requirements of future wireless networks. However, UAV-enabled communications is constrained with its coverage, energy consumption, and flying regulations, and the number of works focusing on the sustainability aspect of UAV-assisted networking has been limited in the literature so far. In this paper, we propose a solution to this limitation; particularly, we design a $Q$-learning-based UAV positioning scheme for sustainable wireless connectivity considering key constraints, that are, altitude regulations, non-flight zones, and transmit power. The objective is to find the optimal position of the UAV base station (BS) and minimize the energy consumption while maximizing the number of users covered. Moreover, a weighting mechanism is developed, where the energy consumption and number of users covered can be prioritized according to network/battery conditions. The proposed Q-learning-based solution is compared to the baseline k-means clustering method, where the UAV BS is positioned at the centroid location that minimizes the cumulative distance between the UAV BS and the users. The results demonstrate that the proposed solution outperforms the baseline k-means clustering-based method in terms of the number of users covered while achieving the desired minimization of the energy consumption.