User-centric (UC) distributed massive multiple-input multiple-output
(D-mMIMO), commonly called cell-free mMIMO, is an important technology
to ensure a more uniform coverage as well as higher spectral and energy
efficiencies in next generation communication systems. This paper
investigates the performance of UC D-mMIMO systems enabled by a swarm of
unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Specifically, it presents a
comprehensive study on UAVs’ deployment and trajectory optimization as
aerial transmission and reception points (TRPs) of D-mMIMO systems,
considering systems composed solely of aerial TRPs and those formed
combining aerial and terrestrial TRPs. Moreover, user equipment (UE)
mobility is modeled using a discrete-time Markov chain, and a novel
approach to heuristically optimize the positions of aerial TRPs is
proposed, one that considers the continuous movement of UEs in the
coverage area. The proposed approach optimizes each UAV’s
three-dimensional location under a time discretization framework, with
the positioning of the UAVs being adjusted periodically, allowing for
iterative trajectory optimization to improve the UEs’ spectral
efficiency (SE) performance. Simulation results reveal that the proposed
UAV trajectory optimization allows for significant SE improvement,
especially for a low UE density scenario. Specifically, comparing the
proposed method with a fixed position setup, up to 47.84% increase on
average SE is achieved.