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arXiv · 2601.04665

Air-to-Ground Communications for Internet of Things: UAV-based Coverage Hole Detection and Recovery

Xiao Fan·Wenkun Wen·Peiran Wu·Junhui Zhao·Minghua Xia
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Abstract

Uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) play a pivotal role in ensuring seamless connectivity for Internet of Things (IoT) devices, particularly in scenarios where conventional terrestrial networks are constrained or temporarily unavailable. However, traditional coverage-hole detection approaches, such as minimizing drive tests, are costly, time-consuming, and reliant on outdated radio-environment data, making them unsuitable for real-time applications. To address these limitations, this paper proposes a UAV-assisted framework for real-time detection and recovery of coverage holes in IoT networks. In the proposed scheme, a patrol UAV is first dispatched to identify coverage holes in regions where the operational status of terrestrial base stations (BSs) is uncertain. Once a coverage hole is detected, one or more UAVs acting as aerial BSs are deployed by a satellite or nearby operational BSs to restore connectivity. The UAV swarm is organized based on Delaunay triangulation, enabling scalable deployment and tractable analytical characterization using stochastic geometry. Moreover, a collision-avoidance mechanism grounded in multi-agent system theory ensures safe and coordinated motion among multiple UAVs. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed framework achieves high efficiency in both coverage-hole detection and on-demand connectivity restoration while significantly reducing operational cost and time.

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Xiao Fan, Wenkun Wen, Peiran Wu, Junhui Zhao, Minghua Xia. 2026-01-08. Air-to-Ground Communications for Internet of Things: UAV-based Coverage Hole Detection and Recovery. https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.04665

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