Chinese Journal of Aeronautics, (2022), 35(9): 19–34

Chinese Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics

& Beihang University
Chinese Journal of Aeronautics
cja@buaa.edu.cn
www.sciencedirect.com

REVIEW

Green UAV communications for 6G: A survey

Xu JIANG a,b, Min SHENG b, Nan ZHAO a,b,*, Chengwen XING c, Weidang LU d,
Xianbin WANG e

a
School of Information and Communication Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China
b
State Key Laboratory of Integrated Service Networks, Xidian University, Xi’an 710071, China
c
School of Information and Electronics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China
d
College of Information Engineering, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou 310023, China
e
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Western University, London, ON N6A 5B9, Canada

Received 1 March 2021; revised 18 March 2021; accepted 8 April 2021

Available online 28 May 2021

KEYWORDS Abstract Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have received a wide range of attention for military
Energy efficiency; and commercial applications. Enhanced with communication capability, UAVs are considered to
Green communications; play important roles in the Sixth Generation (6G) networks due to their low cost and flexible
Sixth Generation (6G) net- deployment. 6G is supposed to be an all-coverage network to provide ubiquitous connections for
works; space, air, ground and underwater. UAVs are able to provide air-borne wireless coverage flexibly,
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle serving as aerial base stations for ground users, as relays to connect isolated nodes, or as mobile
(UAV); users in cellular networks. However, the onboard energy of small UAVs is extremely limited. Thus,
Wireless networks UAVs can be only deployed to establish wireless links temporarily. Prolonging the lifetime and
developing green UAV communication with low power consumption becomes a critical challenge.
In this article, a comprehensive survey on green UAV communications for 6G is carried out. Specif-
ically, the typical UAVs and their energy consumption models are introduced. Then, the typical
trends of green UAV communications are provided. In addition, the typical applications of UAVs
and their green designs are discussed. Finally, several promising techniques and open research issues
are also pointed out.
Ó 2021 Chinese Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Production and hosting by Elsevier Ltd. This is
an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction

* Corresponding author at: School of Information and Communi-
cation Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024,
China.
E-mail address: zhaonan@dlut.edu.cn (N. ZHAO).
Peer review under responsibility of Editorial Committee of CJA.
Production and hosting by Elsevier
The Fifth Generation (5G) wireless communication networks
are designed to provide service for three scenarios, i.e.,
enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB), massive Machine-
Type Communications (mMTC), and ultra-Reliable and
Low-Latency Communications (uRLLC). Compared to the
Fourth Generation (4G) standard, the data rate, spectrum
efficiency, energy efficiency, traffic capacity and latency have
been dramatically improved. However, 5G still faces many

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cja.2021.04.025
1000-9361 Ó 2021 Chinese Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Production and hosting by Elsevier Ltd.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
20
challenges to satisfy all the requirements of future networks
and applications. The next-generation networks are expected
to support many emerging application scenarios, including
remote and high-mobility communications, space-air-ground-
sea all coverage communications, Cellular Vehicle to every-
thing (C-V2X), as well as integrating communication, comput-
ing and sensing. To meet the diverse requirements of these
scenarios, the Sixth Generation (6G) networks are expected
to realize all coverage, full spectra, full applications and strong
security1. To achieve ubiquitous coverage, satellite communi-
cation, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) communication,
and maritime communication will be integrated into terrestrial
cellular networks to provide seamless network access2. Due to
the characteristics of low cost, Line-of-Sight (LoS) air-ground
channel and flexible deployment, UAV communication net-
work is deemed as a promising solution to extend the coverage
of existing networks in the harsh environment and improve the
Quality-of-Service (QoS) in hotspot areas.
UAVs, also known as drones, have been employed in vari-
ous applications for almost one hundred years. Since UAVs
can be controlled remotely and do not need pilots onboard,
they are extensively used in military applications such as
remote surveillance and armed attack to save lives of pilots.
In recent years, commercial UAVs are extensively used due
to the advancement of manufacturing technology and reduced
cost. Nowadays, UAVs have been used for reconnaissance and
surveillance, public safety, transport management, search and
rescue, data collection, and so on. Benefiting from the minia-
turization of communication devices, as well as the flexible
deployment and low cost of UAVs, UAV-assisted communica-
tion has become a promising technique for the future 6G net-
works. As a new member of the 6G networks, UAV is
significantly different from the conventional terrestrial com-
munication nodes. Compared to the terrestrial systems, the
new characteristics of the UAV-assisted communication sys-
tems are summarized as follows:
(1) High altitude. UAVs usually have a higher altitude than
the conventional base stations and mobile users. Usu-
ally, the wireless link between the ground node and the
UAV has no obstacles. Thus, the air-ground channel
experiences less scattering and has less path loss than
the conventional terrestrial channel. The high possibility
of LoS channels has both pros and cons on the air-
ground communications. On one hand, the LoS-
dominant channels bring more reliability and less path
loss in air-ground transmissions than the Non-Line-of-
Sight (NLoS) terrestrial communications. On the other
hand, the LoS channels produce severe interference to
other coexisting nodes in a wireless network. Therefore,
the position of UAV in the Three-Dimensional (3D)
space needs to be investigated to exploit the LoS-
dominant air-ground channels.
(2) High mobility. In the conventional terrestrial communi-
cations, the nodes are usually in fixed locations. For
UAV communications, UAVs can be remotely con-
trolled to fly with high speed in the 3D space. As a result,
the UAV can be flexibly deployed to establish wireless
links. This characteristic is more useful for quick
response in emergency situations, such as disaster rescue
and military action. Besides, the UAV’s mobility can
also be exploited to move close to target user to achieve
X. JIANG et al.
better channel gain and avoid obstacles. Thus, the tra-
jectory of the UAV can be designed to achieve better
communication performance.
(3) Limited energy. Different from the terrestrial communi-
cation infrastructures that have sufficient power sup-
plies, small UAVs only have limited onboard energy
due to their size and weight constraints. In addition,
UAVs need to provide energy for communication and
propulsion simultaneously. The propulsion energy con-
sumption for maintaining the UAV aloft and supporting
its mobility is much higher than the communication-
related energy consumption. Therefore, the endurance
time for a small UAV is limited. As a result, although
the UAV is suitable for quick deployment in harsh envi-
ronment, energy-efficient design is crucial to prolong its
lifespan.
As pointed out in Ref.1, the future 6G wireless network is
supposed to be a space-air-ground-underwater network which
provides ubiquitous coverage. On one hand, UAVs can work
as communication platforms in the air to serve the ground
users due to its airborne nature and flexible deployment. On
the other hand, UAVs can also work as relays to connect the
ground users and the spacecrafts with LoS channels. As a
result, UAV-based communication is supposed to play an
important role in the 6G networks. However, energy consump-
tion is a critical issue in wireless networks, especially for the
long-range communication which has high path loss. Besides,
small-size UAVs are known to have limited on-board energy.
Therefore, green UAV communication is an important issue
and has aroused plenty of research attentions recently.
Since UAVs have the advantages of low cost, high mobility,
flexible deployment and clear LoS air-ground communication
links, UAV communications have aroused extensively atten-
tions in both industry and academia recently. In 2017, a study
was conducted by the Third-Generation Partnership Project
(3GPP) to investigate the support for UAVs in the Long-
Term Evolution (LTE) cellular networks3. In 2018, the Civil
Aviation Authority of China (CAAC) released a test report
for the flight safety of cellular-connected low-altitude UAVs4.
In 2020, a field test of UAV-enabled 5G aerial base station was
released by China Mobile. It is reported in Ref.5 that the teth-
ered UAV base station can cover a radius of 6.5 km at the alti-
tude of 200 m. Due to the great potential of integrating UAVs
into 6G networks, various applications of UAVs have been
investigated in literature, including UAVs as aerial users6–10,
UAVs as aerial base stations11–15, UAVs as relays16–21,
UAV-enabled data collecting22–25, UAV-assisted data offload-
ing26–29, etc.
Although UAVs have a wide range of applications in future
wireless networks, its energy budget is limited due to the reli-
ance on onboard battery30. It is shown that there exist
throughput-energy trade-off and delay-energy trade-off in
UAV-enabled wireless networks. To prolong the lifetime of
UAVs in wireless networks, various energy-saving techniques
have been explored in literature. Promising green techniques
such as energy harvesting and reconfigurable intelligent surface
are also extensively investigated. In this article, we provide a
comprehensive survey of green UAV communications for
6G, and discuss the promising techniques and open challenges.
The organization of this article is summarized as follows. In
Section 2, the two typical types of UAVs classified by flying
Green UAV communications for 6G: A survey 21

mechanics, i.e., the fixed-wing and rotary-wing UAVs, as well able to hover at fixed locations and need runways for taking
as their energy consumption models are introduced. In Sec- off and landing. Therefore, the two types of UAVs have differ-
tion 3, the typical trends of green UAV communications are ent energy consumption models.
introduced. The techniques to realize green UAV communica-
tions are summarized in Section 4. In Section 5, the applica- 2.1. Fixed-wing UAV energy consumption model
tions of UAVs in 6G networks and the way to achieve green
UAV communication in literature are reviewed and discussed. The accurate theoretical energy consumption model for fixed-
Several open research issues are discussed in Section 6. Finally, wing UAVs is difficult to obtain, which is related to a number
this article is concluded in Section 7. A detailed taxonomy of factors including weight, wing area, air density, velocity and
graph of this article is shown in Fig. 1. acceleration. In Ref.32, without considering the abrupt deceler-
ation that requires the engine to abnormally produce a reverse
2. Types of UAVs and their energy consumption models thrust against the forward motion of the aircraft, a simplified
fixed-wing energy consumption model with level flight was
There are many types of UAVs due to its wide range of appli- derived. Denoting the horizontal trajectory of UAV in the
cations. The UAVs can be classified into different categories duration of T as q(t) = [x(t), y(t)]T, 0 < t < T, the instanta-
according to different criteria such as weight, size, wing config- _
neous velocity and acceleration can be expressed as v(t) = qðtÞ
uration, flying altitude and energy supplying. Civil authorities and a(t) = € qðtÞ respectively. The propulsion energy consump-
usually classify UAVs according to their weights. For example, tion model can be expressed as
the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) Australia classi- Z T"
c2
fies UAVs by weights, and the characteristics for each type EðqðtÞÞ ¼ c1 k vðtÞ k3 þ
of UAVs are listed in Ref.31, which is shown in Table 1. 0 k vðtÞ k
In this article, we mainly focus on small UAVs which can 0 2 13
2 ðaT ðtÞvðtÞÞ
be flexibly deployed to establish communication links in wire- B k aðtÞ k  kvðtÞk2 C7
 @1 þ A5dt
less networks. In terms of wing configuration, the fixed-wing g2
and rotary-wing UAVs are two types of UAVs widely used
in practice. Generally speaking, the fixed-wing UAVs have 1  
þ m k vðTÞ k2  k vð0Þ k2 ð1Þ
higher speed and less power consumption than the same-size 2
rotary-wing UAVs. However, the fixed-wing UAVs are not

Fig. 1 Taxonomy graph of this article.

22 X. JIANG et al.

Table 1 Types of UAVs and their characteristics.31.

Micro Very small Small (2–25 kg) Medium (25–150 kg) Large (>150 kg)
(<0.1 kg) (0.1-2 kg)
Model Parrot Parrot Disco DJI Inspire 2 Scout B-330 UAV helicopter Predator B
Swing
Weight 0.073 kg 0.75 kg 3.44 kg 90 kg 2223 kg
Payload 0 0 0.81 kg 50 kg 1700 kg
Flying Fixed- Fixed-wing Multi-rotor Multi-rotor Fixed-wing
mechanism wing/
rotary-
wing
Range 50–80 m 2 km 2 km N/A 1852 km
Altitude N/A N/A N/A 3 km 15 km
Flight time 6–8 min 45 min 27 min 3 hours 60 hours
Power 160 mAh 2700 mAh 25 4280 mAh Li-battery Gasoline Turboprop engine
supply Li-battery A Li-battery
Power N/A N/A N/A Engine: 21 kW; Onboard power Engine: 712 kW
consumption generator for payload: 1.5 kW
Application Recreation Recreation Professional aerial Survey (data acquisition), HD Armed reconnaissance, airborne
photography and video live stream surveillance, and target
cinematography acquisition

where c1 and c2 are the parameters related to the aircraft’s
weight, wing area, air density, wingspan efficiency, and aspect
ratio, etc. g is the gravitational acceleration with a nominal
value of 9.8 m/s2. m is the mass of the UAV including its pay-
load. The first term of Eq. (1) is the energy for the UAV’s
engine to overcome the drag force to maintain in the air, which
is related to the UAV’s speed and centrifugal acceleration. The
second term is the change of the UAV’s kinetic energy.
The constant speed straight flight doesn’t need energy to
change the flying direction or speed, which is able to save
the propulsion energy significantly. Thus, it is widely utilized
for energy-efficient long-range UAV flying. Based on Eq. (1),
consider the special case that the UAV has a straight and level
flight with constant speed V = ||v(t)||, i.e., the UAV maintains
constant flying direction and altitude with a(t) = 0. It is
observed that for straight and level flight with constant speed
V, the power consumption is P(V) = c1V3 + c2/V. The power
consumption is a sum of two parts. The first term is the para-
sitic power to overcome the drag from the UAV’s movement.
The second part is the induced power to provide lift force to
maintain the UAV airborne. We should notice that if
V ? 0, the power consumption P(V)?1. Therefore, the
fixed-wing UAV is unable to hover at a fixed location.
For a fixed-wing UAV, another typical trajectory is circular
flight with constant speed and time-varying heading directions.
It is known that the fixe-wing UAV cannot hove at fixed
location. In addition, circular flight usually has fixed speed,
which doesn’t need energy to speed up or slow down. Thus,
circular flight is commonly utilized to for the fixed-wing
UAV to save energy when serving a given ground area. In this
case, the acceleration is normal to the flying direction. From
Eq. (1), the UAV’s energy consumption can be expressed as
   RT
EðV; aðtÞÞ ¼ c1 V3 þ c2 =V T þ c2 =ðVg2 Þ 0 a2 ðtÞdt, where
a(t) = ||a(t)|| is the magnitude of the UAV’s acceleration. It
can be seen that changing the heading of UAV consumes addi-
tional energy than the straight flight.
For the design of UAV and its trajectory optimization,
there are two particular speeds which needs to be concerned.
One is the Maximum-Endurance (ME) speed Vme, which is
defined as the optimal speed for the UAV to have the maxi-
mum endurance. Mathematically, The ME speed can be
expressed as Vme ¼ arg min PðVÞ. For a fixed-wing UAV with
VP0
constant speed, from P(V) = c1V3 + c2/V we can find P(V) is
convex with respect to V. Thus, the ME speed can be obtained
by setting its first-order derivative to zero. We can obtain that
Vme=(c2/(3c1))1/4. At this time, the power consumption is
P(Vme) = 7/4(c1c32)1/4.
The other is the Maximum-Range (MR) speed Vmr, which
is defined as the optimal speed for the UAV to have the max-
imum flying range, i.e., Vmr ¼ arg min PðVÞ=V. The object
VP0
function is also convex with respect to V. The MR speed can
be easily obtained as Vmr=(c2/c1)1/4 = 31/4Vme, and the energy
consumption per travelling distance E0 ðVmr Þ ¼ PðVÞ=V ¼
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
2 c1 c2 . Thus, we can conclude that the ME speed is always
smaller than the MR speed for a fixed-wing UAV.
2.2. Rotary-wing UAV energy consumption model
Since the flying mechanism of rotary-wing UAVs is totally dif-
ferent from the fixed-wing ones, the above energy consumption
model is not suitable for the rotary-wing UAVs. It is also
non-trivial to obtain the closed-form expression of a rotary-
wing UAV’s energy consumption model for arbitrary 3D
flight. In Ref.33, Zeng et al. derived an analytical energy con-
sumption model for rotary-wing UAVs, by ignoring the energy
consumption caused by UAV acceleration or deceleration. For
a rotary-wing UAV with speed V, its power consumption
model can be expressed as
sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
! !12
3V2 V4 V2
PðVÞ ¼ P0 1 þ 2 þ Pi 1þ 4 2
Utip 4v0 2v0
1
þ d0 qsAV3 ð2Þ
2
Green UAV communications for 6G: A survey
Fig. 2 Typical curves of propulsion power consumption for fixed-wing and rotary-wing UAV.
where P0 and Pi are the blade profile power and induced power
to maintain the UAV to stay in the air. These two parameters
are related to the UAV’s weight m, rotor disk area A, air den-
sity q, etc. Utip is the tip rotor speed of the rotor blade. v0 is the
mean rotor induced velocity in hovering. d0 is the fuselage drag
ratio. s is the rotor solidity.
In Eq. (2) it can be observed that the power consumption
model of a rotary-wing UAV has three parts: blade profile,
induced, and parasite power. The blade profile power is the
power needed for the UAV to overcome the profile drag of
the blades, which increases quadratically with respect to the
UAV’s speed V. The parasite power is to overcome the fuse-
lage drag, which increases cubically with respect to V. The
induced power is to overcome the induced drag of the blades,
which decreases with V.
It is difficult to obtain the closed-form expression of a rotary-
wing UAV’s ME speed. Practically, the ME speed is usually
obtained by numerical methods. For the MR speed, the energy
consumption per unit travelling distance is E0 ðVmr Þ ¼ PðVÞ=V.
Thus, its MR speed can also be found numerically.
In Fig. 2, the straight and level flight propulsion power con-
sumption curves versus speed V for the fixed-wing UAV and
rotary-wing UAV are plotted, respectively. The simulation
parameters are the same as in Ref.32 and Ref. 33. The results
show that the power consumption first decreases and then
increases with the UAV speed V. In addition, infinite power
is required for a fixed-wing UAV to hover at a fixed location
(i.e., V = 0). We can also find that the ME speed is smaller
than the MR speed for both the fixed-wing and rotary-wing
UAVs.
3. Trends of green UAV communications
Achieving green UAV communications is a critical challenge
for 6G networks. On one hand, UAVs only have limited
onboard energy, which greatly limits the lifetime of UAVs.
On the other hand, UAVs have to provide energy for propul-
sion and communication at the same time, which requires high
energy consumption. Therefore, the green UAV communica-
tions have been extensively investigated. Generally, the exist-
ing works on green UAV communications can be classified
into three categories: (A) energy-saving UAV communications
which aim at saving energy in UAV-assisted networks; (B)
energy harvesting for UAV communications, which aim at
23
providing wireless energy supply for UAV-assisted systems;
(C) UAV communications with reconfigurable intelligent
surface, which aim at saving energy for communication by
low-power passive reflecting surfaces.
3.1. Energy-saving UAV communications
As discussed above, the onboard energy supply for small-
size UAVs is limited. Although UAVs can be deployed to
relieve traffic congestion in hotspot areas and improve con-
nectivity in harsh environment, the lifespan of these UAV-
assisted communication systems are constricted by the lim-
ited energy supply. Therefore, developing energy-saving tech-
niques for UAV communications is a critical challenge.
Since the green aspect of communication has already
become a consensus in both industry and academia, the
energy-saving UAV communications have been extensively
explored in literature. Based on the purpose of applications,
the energy-saving UAV communications can be sorted into
three categories: (A) Given communication requirement,
minimizing energy/power consumption; (B) Given total
energy/power budget, maximizing performance gains; (C)
maximizing the energy efficiency. These three categories are
further introduced as follows.
(1) Given communication requirement, minimizing energy/
power consumption. In most applications, UAVs are
temporarily deployed to finish specific tasks. For exam-
ple, UAVs can be temporarily deployed to relay data in
emergency situations34, relieve traffic congestion in the
stadium or meeting hall35,36, collect data in harsh envi-
ronment22,25,37, etc. In these applications, minimizing
the energy consumption is an effective way to realize
green UAV communications. In UAV-enabled relaying
systems, the position of UAV relay affects the distances
of the source-relay link and the relay-destination link.
As a result, the placement of UAV relay is an important
parameter on the energy consumption. With given trans-
mission rate requirement, the power consumption of a
UAV relay system was minimized by joint power alloca-
tion and UAV placement design in Ref.34, where the
fixed-wing UAV hovering at a fixed location was consid-
ered. Since the propulsion power of UAV is fixed, only
the transmit power of the UAV was minimized. When
24
the UAV has a flying trajectory, its propulsion energy
cannot be ignored. In Ref.35, the authors proposed a
simplified energy consumption model of the fixed-wing
UAV, and the energy minimizing problem for air-
ground communication was investigated. When UAVs
are employed as aerial base stations, the energy con-
sumption minimization problem was studied in Ref.35
and Ref.36. Gathering data in IoT networks is one of
the important applications of UAV. Since UAVs can
be flexibly deployed, they can be utilized to gather data
in costly or dangerous places for humans to access. In
this case, the sensor nodes are energy-limited and more
difficult to recharge than UAVs. In Ref.22, the energy
consumption of the sensor nodes was minimized in a
UAV-enabled data collection system for Wireless Sensor
Networks (WSNs). In Ref.25, an energy minimizing
scheme by optimizing UAV trajectory was proposed
for data gathering and positioning of IoT devices. The
UAV-enabled data collection in fading channels to min-
imize the sensor nodes’ energy consumption was studied
in Ref.22. The energy minimization for a fixed-wing
UAV data collecting system was studied in Ref.37, where
the trajectory, user scheduling and power allocation
were jointly optimized. UAVs can also be employed as
mobile computers to serve the low-power IoT nodes.
The energy minimization problem for UAV assisted
Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) systems was exten-
sively explored in Ref.38–42. Note that the propulsion
energy consumption model in Ref.35 and Ref.42 is a sim-
plified version of Eq. (1). Ref.38 employs the fixed-wing
energy consumption model in Eq. (1). Ref.42 employs
the rotary-wing energy consumption model in Eq. (2).
(2) Given total energy/power budget, maximizing perfor-
mance gains. Although UAVs are widely used to execute
various tasks, the onboard energy for a small-size UAV
is limited. To make full use of the UAV’s onboard
energy, improving the performance gains of UAV com-
munication networks is also a promising technique. It is
shown in literature that the throughput, delay, rate, out-
age probability and many other performance metrics
can be improved by power allocation and exploiting
the characteristics of UAVs. For example, in multi-
UAV enabled air-ground communication systems with
limited energy budget, the throughput can be maximized
by joint optimizing the trajectory, user scheduling and
power allocation12. In the Orthogonal Frequency Divi-
sion Multiple Access (OFDMA) system, the throughput
maximization problem can also be realized by band-
width allocation14. For delay-sensitive applications,
optimizing the UAV’s trajectory can also improve the
communication delay with limited transmit power43.
Note that in Ref.43, the rotary-wing UAV energy con-
sumption model in Eq. (2) was employed. For UAV-
enabled data offloading for cell-edge users, the sum rate
can be maximized by trajectory optimization27. In Non-
Orthogonal Multiple-Access (NOMA) millimeter Wave
(mmWave) systems, the downlink sum rate can be max-
imized by jointly optimizing the 3D UAV position,
beam pattern and transmit power44. In UAV-enabled
relaying systems, the system performance can be
enhanced by optimizing the position of UAV and trans-
mit power20,45,46. In delay-tolerant UAV relaying sys-
X. JIANG et al.
tems, the UAV trajectory can also be exploited to
enhance the system performance18–20. The UAV relay
can receive data when it flies close to the source node,
then stores the received data in its onboard memory,
and ferries the data to the destination when it flies close
to the destination node. In this case, although there
exists transmission delay when relaying data, the system
throughput can be significantly improved by the trajec-
tory optimization.
(3) Maximizing energy efficiency. In green communication
networks, energy efficiency is the most widely used perfor-
mance metrics, which is measured by the number of suc-
cessfully transmitted bits per unit energy consumption.
In conventional terrestrial communication networks,
the energy consumption is usually measured by the energy
consumed for communication, including energy for com-
munication circuit, signal processing, signal radiation/re-
ception, etc. Whereas in UAV communication networks,
the energy required to maintain the UAV airborne is
much higher than the energy for communication. Specif-
ically, the power for communication is usually less than
one watt47, and the propulsion power for small UAVs
can be a few hundred watts48. Therefore, it is necessary
to take the propulsion energy consumption into consider-
ation when investigating the energy efficiency of UAV
communications. As a result, the energy efficiency can
be calculated by the ratio between the successfully trans-
mitted bits and the sum energy consumption of communi-
cation and propulsion. The energy-efficient placement of
UAV-enabled aerial base station was optimized by game
theory in Ref.49. By employing a static rotary-wing UAV
as the aerial base station, the altitude and the transmit
power of UAV are the main factors related to the energy
efficiency50. To maximize the energy efficiency of multiple
aerial base stations, the positions of these UAVs, the
power scheduling and the power allocation can be jointly
optimized51. For multi-UAV served networks, the inter-
ference is also a critical issue. Since the frequency band
is always reused by different cells, the network experi-
ences inter-cell interference from the users in the neigh-
boring cells. One way to mitigate the inter-cell
interference is to deploy the aerial base stations in
different positions. In Ref.52, the energy-efficient 3D
deployment of UAV-enabled base stations was investi-
gated. In Ref.51 and Ref.53, NOMA was employed to deal
with the interference. In UAV-enabled NOMA networks,
the positions of aerial base stations and the transmit
power can be optimized to reduce the power consumption
and eliminate the interference simultaneously. In UAV-
enabled NOMA networks with time sharing, time and
power allocation can be jointly optimized to improve
the energy efficiency54. Maximizing the energy efficiency
under the constraints of communications coverage, fair-
ness and connectivity was studied in Ref.55. In this case,
the deep reinforcement learning was employed to learn
the environment dynamics and make decisions. To maxi-
mize the energy efficiency of UAV served users under the
Quality of Experience (QoE) constraint, the user schedul-
ing, UAV trajectory, transmit power and bandwidth were
jointly optimized in Ref.56. Therefore, the energy effi-
ciency has been widely studied in various applications
such as UAV-enabled data relay57–60, UAV-enabled data
Green UAV communications for 6G: A survey
collection61–64, and UAV-enabled mobile edge comput-
ing65,66. Note that the fixed-wing UAV energy consump-
tion model in Eq.(1) or its simplified version was
employed in Refs.58,62,65, and the rotary-wing UAV
energy consumption model or its simplified version was
employed in Refs.56,57,59.
3.2. Energy harvesting for UAV communications
Different from the conventional terrestrial communication
facilities, fixed power supply is not available for most flying
UAVs, and the endurance of a small UAV is no more than
one hour in most cases. Therefore, the battery of UAV needs
to be changed or recharged frequently. The radio frequency
energy harvesting is able to provide energy supply for UAVs
in a wireless environment. In 1969, a test was conducted for wire-
less powered UAV, which showed that with 2.45 GHz radio fre-
quency power supply, a small rotary-wing UAV is able to hover
at an altitude of 50 feet (15 m)67. In addition, for terrestrial com-
munication nodes deployed without power supply, UAVs can
also carry batteries as their payloads to charge the terrestrial
nodes by Wireless Power Transfer (WPT). This is especially use-
ful for isolated wireless sensors deployed in harsh environ-
ment68. For instance, UAV can be employed to charge the
low-power receivers69. In Ref.70, the 3D trajectory optimization
of UAV-enabled WPT was analyzed, where the UAV equipped
with antenna array was considered to charge multiple sensor
nodes simultaneously. Since the UAV itself is energy-limited,
in Ref.71 Yan et al. considered the scenario where a UAV is
charged by a base station, and then the UAV charges the multi-
ple wireless sensors. The UAV energy consumption model in Eq.
(1) was employed in Ref.71.
Since wireless signals carry both information and energy,
the Simultaneous Wireless Information and Power Transfer
(SWIPT) is also a suitable technique for UAV-assisted net-
works. For example, if the UAV is working as a mobile user
in a cellular network, the downlink from the base station to
UAV not only can offload data but also deliver energy at
the same time. Besides, when the UAV is broadcasting to wire-
less sensor networks without fixed power supply, energy can
also be delivered to the sensor nodes, which can prolong their
lifespan significantly. A full-duplex rotary-wing UAV enabled
wireless powered Internet of Things (IoT) network was studied
in Ref.72, where the UAV works as an energy transmitter and a
data receiver simultaneously. With the energy of hovering, fly-
ing and emitting considered, the energy consumption was min-
imized by an iterative algorithm. Although the UAV can
charge the ground nodes via WPT, the energy of UAV is lim-
ited. In Ref.73, the total energy consumption for a UAV-
enabled wireless powered network was investigated, where
rotary-wing energy consumption model in Eq.(2) were consid-
ered. Yang et al. proposed joint trajectory planning and power
allocation algorithms to minimize the energy consumption. In
Ref.74, Hou et al. considered the scenario where the UAV
charges the wireless nodes and collects data from them, and
the energy minimization problem for a full-duplex Multiple-
Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) UAV was investigated with
the hardware impairments considered. Another important
issue of the UAV-enabled wireless powered IoT network is
the packet loss. In Ref.75, Li et al. addressed the data collecting
and energy transfer problem by Q-learning to minimize the
25
packet loss. The energy efficiency and spectrum efficiency of
UAV-enabled wireless powered communication networks
was analyzed in Ref.76. The results show that the flying
UAV scheme outperforms the static UAV scheme.
Another application for UAV-enabled wireless powered
network is mobile edge computing. The UAV can charge the
sensor nodes by wireless signals. Then, the sensor nodes are
able to offload the computation tasks to the UAV by the har-
vested energy, which was studied in Ref.77. In this case, the
computation rate maximization problem was studied in
Ref.78, where the central processing unit frequencies, user
offloading time, and user transmit power are jointly optimized.
Since the energy and computation capacity of a small UAV is
also limited, a base station assisted wireless-powered mobile
edge computing system was studied in Ref.79, where the
UAV works as an edge computer, energy relay and data relay
simultaneously. The UAV is wirelessly charged by laser from
the base station and the ground nodes are charged by radio
frequency signals from the UAV. In Ref.80, the latency of
the user devices for a UAV-enabled wireless-powered mobile
edge computing system were minimized by optimizing the
offloading decisions, user scheduling, as well as computation
and charging resources. Previous works mainly considered
the static UAV, while the mobile UAV can exploit the air-
ground channels more effectively. In Ref.81, the mobility of
UAV was explored to minimize the total energy consumption
of a UAV-enabled wireless-powered MEC system. Employing
the propulsion energy consumption model in Ref.32, the trajec-
tory of a fixed-wing UAV-enabled wireless-powered MEC sys-
tem was optimized in Ref.82, where the total energy
consumption for propulsion, computation and communication
of the UAV were minimized. Besides the radio frequency
energy, laser is another way to charge the UAV wirelessly83.
The power efficiency of a relay system with a laser powered
UAV was investigated in Ref.84, where the transmit power
and trajectory were jointly optimized.
3.3. UAV communications with reconfigurable intelligent surface
Employing low power devices is another way to achieve green
UAV communications. The reconfigurable intelligent surfaces
have been proposed as a promising technique for the future 6G
networks recently. Since the reconfigurable intelligent surface
is a planar surface with low-cost passive reflecting elements,
using reconfigurable intelligent surface can improve the com-
munication environment with low power consumption85.
Specifically, the reconfigurable intelligent surface can change
the amplitude and phase of the induced wireless signals by
its reflecting elements with low-power consumption. Thus,
reconfigurable intelligent surfaces are assumed to improve
the energy efficiency of 6G networks significantly. Since UAVs
can be deployed flexibly to provide LoS links, combining
UAVs and reconfigurable intelligent surfaces is of great poten-
tial to provide green communication services for 6G.
Equipped with reconfigurable intelligent surface, the UAV
can improve network connectivity with only a little power con-
sumed for communication. The UAV-borne reconfigurable
intelligent surface can work as a passive aerial relay to reduce
the energy consumption86,87. In Ref.88, the reconfigurable
intelligent surface assisted UAV relay was investigated, where
the coverage and reliability of UAV relaying networks have
26
been improved significantly. In Ref.89 and Ref.90, the reconfig-
urable intelligent surface was employed to improve the air-
ground communications. The energy minimization problem
of a reconfigurable intelligent surface assisted UAV network
was investigated in Ref.91. It is shown that the energy con-
sumption can be significantly reduced by integrating reconfig-
urable intelligent surfaces in UAV-enabled networks.
3.4. Summary
As discussed above, the green UAV communications can be
classified into energy-saving UAV communications, energy
harvesting for UAV communications, and UAV communica-
tions with reconfigurable intelligent surface. The relevant refer-
ences for these categories are summarized in Table 2. In
Refs.22,25,34–42, minimizing the energy/power consumption
with given communication requirement was investigated. In
Refs.12,14,18–20,27,43–47, maximizing performance gains with
given energy budget was investigated. Maximizing the energy
efficiency of UAV-assisted system was investigated in Ref.49–
66
. In Ref.67–84, the energy harvesting UAV communications
was studied. In Refs.86–91, the UAV communication with
reconfigurable intelligent surface was studied. In these refer-
ences, the applications of UAVs include data relay, data
offloading, data gathering, mobile edge computing, et al. It
can be seen that green UAV communications has aroused a
wide range of research attentions in literature.
4. Techniques to achieve green UAV communications
To improve to the energy efficiency of UAV-enabled wireless
networks, various techniques can be employed. Compared to
conventional terrestrial networks, more gains can be achieved
by exploiting the characteristics of UAVs. In particular, one
way to enhance the energy efficiency is to reduce the path loss.
For this purpose, the UAV can fly close to the target user to
shorten the transmission distance. In addition, the LoS air-
ground channel is also helpful to reduce the path loss. Besides
reducing path loss, other techniques including power alloca-
tion, wide bandwidth, as well as energy harvesting are also fun-
damental techniques for green UAV communications.
Table 2 Classification of green UAV communications.
Categories References
Energy-saving Given requirement, 22,25,34–42
UAV minimizing energy/
communications power consumption
Given total energy/ 12,14,18–20,27,43–47
power budget,
maximizing
performance gains
Maximizing energy 49–66
efficiency
Energy harvesting for UAV 67–84
communications
UAV communications with reconfigurable 86–91
intelligent surface
X. JIANG et al.
4.1. Exploiting the mobility
Compared to terrestrial wireless networks, high mobility is one
of the most important characteristics of UAV-ground net-
works. On one hand, the UAV can be deployed on demand
to establish wireless links, especially in emergency situations.
On the other hand, the UAV’s mobility can be exploited to
shorten the link distance, which is beneficial to improve the
energy efficiency. Generally, there are two methods to benefit
from the UAV’s mobility in wireless networks. One is the static
placement of UAVs, where the UAVs are deployed in fixed
locations to serve the ground users. The other lies in the mobil-
ity of UAVs, which can be fully exploited to further shorten
the link distance.
(1) Placement of UAVs. UAVs can be deployed as static
aerial communication platforms to provide wireless ser-
vice. Since the UAV can flexibly deployed on demand,
the placement of static UAVs has been extensively inves-
tigated in literature. The altitude and horizontal location
of the UAV are the main parameters to optimize. In this
case, the position of the UAV can be optimized to
reduce the distances of the air-ground communication
links, which is helpful for reducing the communication
path loss. Thus, the communication-related energy con-
sumption can be reduced by optimizing the placement of
UAV. It is worth noting that fixed-wing UAVs cannot
hover at fixed locations. Thus, only rotary-wing UAVs
are considered in this case. For the propulsion consump-
tion model discussed in Section 2, the rotary-wing UAV
consumes constant power when hovering. As a result,
the communication-related energy is the main factor
for the energy-efficient design of static UAV-assisted
networks. In NOMA-UAV networks, the UAV’s posi-
tion can affect the performance of the successive inter-
ference cancellation. For example, the placement of
NOMA-UAV enabled base station was studied in
Ref.14 and Ref.50. For multiple UAVs enabled aerial
base stations, the positions of UAVs need to be carefully
designed to avoid interference and provide good com-
munication performance. The placement of multiple
UAV base stations was investigated in Ref.51 and
Ref.52. In the UAV-enabled relaying system, the posi-
tion of UAV needs to be optimized to shorten the dis-
tance of the source-relay link and the relay-destination
link simultaneously. Thus, the placement of UAV relay
is also a hot research topic34,45,46. In Ref.45, the position
of UAV was optimized to enhance the reliability of
UAV relaying system. In Ref.34 and Ref.46, the place-
ment of UAV relay was investigated to improve the
transmission rate. In UAV-enabled mobile edge com-
puting systems, the position of UAV can also be opti-
mized to enhance the performance of computing and
data offloading41. It is worth noting that tethered UAVs
are suitable to hover at fixed locations. In this case, the
tethered UAVs can have wired energy supply and wired
links with ground infrastructure. Therefore, tethered
UAV-enabled aerial base station is a promising solution
in situations to establish wireless access quickly and
enduringly92. Although the existing literature mainly
focuses on placement of UAVs on a 2D horizontal
Green UAV communications for 6G: A survey
plane, the altitude of UAVs has significant influence on
the air-ground channel quality. In Ref.93, the 3D place-
ment of UAV-enabled base stations was investigated to
reduce interference. The efficient 3D placement of UAV
over actual and fine-grained terrain was investigated in
Ref.94, and linear complexity algorithm was proposed
to solve this problem. The 3D deployment of a swarm
of UAVs was studied in Ref.95, where the total amount
of transmitted data was maximized.
(2) Trajectory planning of UAVs. Although UAVs are easy
to deploy at fixed locations, optimizing the trajectory of
UAVs brings additional degrees of freedom in UAV
communications, especially in multiuser air-ground
communications. Since the propulsion energy is highly
related to the velocity and acceleration of UAVs for
both fixed-wing and rotary-wing UAVs, the propulsion
energy consumption need to be taken into consideration
when designing energy-efficient communication systems.
As the accurate propulsion energy consumption for
UAVs is non-trivial, simplified energy consumption
model in Ref.32 and Ref.33 are widely employed in liter-
ature. In this case, the energy for propulsion and signal
transmission are both important factors on the system
energy consumption. Note that UAV trajectory opti-
mization is usually combined with user scheduling and
power allocation. This is because when the UAV flies
close to a target ground node, the communication link
is established and the power is allocated to improve
energy efficiency. In recent years, the trajectory opti-
mization of UAVs has been extensively explored to save
energy and improve the communication quality15,18–
20,22,27,32,36
. The trajectory of UAV-enabled aerial base
station was investigated in Ref.35,36 and Ref.96 to save
the energy consumption. In UAV-enabled relaying sys-
tems, trajectory optimization is one of the most impor-
tant factors on the system performance. Thus, the
trajectory of UAV relay is widely investigated in
Ref.18,43,58,59. The UAV’s trajectory can be optimized
to improve the overall throughput of UAV-enabled
relaying system20,34. In UAV data gathering systems,
the UAV can fly close to each ground node to reduce
the link distance. For example, the trajectory of a
fixed-wing UAV was optimized to minimize the energy
consumption in Ref.97. The energy minimization trajec-
tory optimization for a rotary-wing UAV data collection
system was studied in Ref.22 and Ref.37. The energy-
efficient UAV trajectory optimization for data collection
was investigated in Ref.62. In UAV-enabled mobile edge
computing systems, the UAV’s trajectory was also
extensively explored40,42,65,98. Note that the rotary-
wing UAVs can fly-and-hover, which simplifies the tra-
jectory optimization problem for multi-user UAV-
ground communications, whereas less energy is needed
for fixed-wing UAVs to maintain airborne and fly.
Therefore, the choice of UAVs depends on the specific
applications and requirements. Although it is difficult
to optimize the 3D trajectory of UAV, there are some
works focusing on this topic. In Ref.44, the 3D trajectory
of a UAV-enabled mmWave network was investigated
to maximize the sum rate. In a UAV-assisted simultane-
ous uplink and downlink transmission network, the 3D
trajectory was optimized to maximize the system
27
throughput Ref.99. The 3D trajectory optimization for
anti-jamming UAV-assisted wireless sensor network
was studied in Ref.100, where the rate was maximized
by an iterative algorithm. Note that the fixed-wing
UAV energy consumption model was employed in
Refs.32,38,58, and the rotary-wing UAV energy consump-
tion model was employed in Ref.37.
4.2. Power allocation
Power allocation is a classical way to enhance the network per-
formance and energy efficiency. Since the ground nodes are usu-
ally deployed at fixed locations, the air-ground link distance
mainly depends on the position of the UAV. To reduce the path
loss of UAV-assisted communication networks, a typical power
allocation scheme is to allocate more power when the UAV is
close to the target, and vice versa. For UAV-enabled multiuser
system, the transmit power can be allocated to the user when the
UAV flies close to it. In this way, more gains can be achieved by
power allocation. Since UAVs only have limited onboard
energy, power allocation is also an effective technique in
UAV-enabled wireless networks26. Power allocation allows
the system to make full use of the transmit power budget. In mul-
tiuser systems, carefully designed power allocation can reduce
the interference among users. Therefore, power allocation was
investigated in many UAV communication systems including
aerial base stations51,53,54,56, UAV relay18,20,34,46,58,59, UAV
data gathering37, and UAV-enabled mobile edge comput-
ing38,40–42,65,66,98. In addition, since more power are needed for
UAV propulsion than communication, the propulsion energy
of UAVs becomes a main research issue for green UAV-
assisted networks. It is worth noting that in UAV communica-
tion systems, power allocation is always combined with trajec-
tory optimization of UAVs. This is because when the UAV
flies close to a target user, the transmit power can be adjusted
to improve the transmission performance. As a result, many
works focus on optimizing the power allocation and trajectory
jointly, as in Refs.15,18,20,34,37,40,42,56,58,59,62,98.
4.3. Directional transmission
One important way to save energy in wireless communications
is to focus the emitted energy on the desired directions. Bene-
fiting from the high possibility of LoS air-ground channels,
more gains can be achieved than terrestrial channels by using
directional antennas. It is worth noting that the antennas of
terrestrial base stations are usually designed downtilted to
serve the ground users, only the sidelobe can be employed to
serve the flying UAVs. For cellular-connected UAVs, the
model of antenna gains for the base stations needs to take into
consideration for energy efficiency. In addition, in mmWave
UAV networks, the UAV can equip with large-scale antenna
arrays, which makes it possible for the UAV to flexibly change
its emitted direction by beamforming101. For example, the
beam pattern of a UAV-enabled mmWave MIMO-NOMA
network was optimized in Ref.44 to maximize the sum rate.
In mmWave-enabled UAV networks, the energy-efficiency
can be maximized by jointly optimizing the UAV placement,
hybrid precoding and power allocation102. The UAV with
directional antenna was also considered in an aerial cellular
28
offloading scenario to maximize the energy efficiency96. In
Ref.35, the UAV with directional antenna was explored to min-
imize the energy consumption.
4.4. More spectrum
Generally speaking, the energy efficiency of wireless networks
can be significantly improved when more spectrum is
employed. One way to extend the spectrum is to employ the
above 6 GHz spectrum such as mmWave band103. Another
way is to share the spectrum with other communication sys-
tems by carefully managing the interference. Besides, cognitive
radio is also a suitable solution for UAV networks104,105. The
UAV can sense the spectrum more effectively than terrestrial
devices due to its better LoS air-ground channels. Thus, the
wireless spectrum can be more efficiently used by UAV-
enabled wireless networks. Besides, by sharing the spectrum
with other communication networks, the energy efficiency
can also be improved105. For instance, UAV communication
networks can share the same spectrum with underlaid
Device-to-Device (D2D) communications, and the result in
Ref.106 shows the feasibility of such a spectrum sharing system.
To make full use of the spectrum, spectrum management is
also a promising technique for UAV-assisted networks107.
4.5. Energy harvesting
Small UAVs are usually powered by batteries, which have lim-
ited lifetime. Therefore, recharging or changing batteries is
commonly adopted to prolong the lifetime of UAV networks.
However, recharging or changing batteries usually requires the
UAVs to stop providing communication services periodically.
An alternative approach is to recharging the UAVs by wireless
signals. For wireless energy-enabled transmission, three tech-
niques are summarized in Ref.108, i.e., inductive coupling,
magnetic resonance coupling and radio frequency wireless
power transfer. Although inductive coupling and magnetic res-
onance coupling have the advantages of power density and
conversion efficiency, their effective distance is quite short,
which is no more than a few meters. Since the effective distance
for radio wireless power transfer can be as far as kilometers,
WPT is the most suitable technique for UAV networks. Since
maximizing the received power is both beneficial to WPT and
information transmission109, SWIPT has also aroused vast
research attentions. Benefiting from the LoS air-ground chan-
nels, the UAV communication networks can achieve higher
power efficiency than the NLoS terrestrial networks. There-
fore, energy harvesting is a promising technique for green
UAV communications, which has been extensively
investigated110.
4.6. Summary
The techniques to achieve green UAV communications have
been widely investigated in literature. According to the review
of the references in this section, these techniques are summa-
rized in Table 3. In Refs.14,34,41,45,46,50–52,92, The static place-
ment of UAVs was investigated. The trajectory optimization
of UAVs was investigated in Refs.15,19,20,22,27,32–34,36–38,41,44,49
,58,60,61,64,67,100
. Power allocation for UAV communications
was studied in Refs.15,18–20,22,27,32–37,40,42,43,58,59,97,98. In
X. JIANG et al.
Refs.35,44,96,101,102, directional UAV communication was inves-
tigated. In Ref.103–107, UAV communications with more spec-
trum resources was investigated. The energy harvesting UAV
communications was studied in Refs.67–84,110. It can be seen
that these techniques are employed in various applications
including data relay, data gathering, mobile edge computing,
et al. It worth noting that multiple techniques can be utilized
in one communication system jointly to achieve more perfor-
mance gains.
5. Applications of green UAV communications
Although the research of 6G is still at its infant stage, and the
requirement of 6G is not definite. UAV-assisted communica-
tion is supposed to play an important role in the future 6G net-
work due to the low cost and flexible deployment of
UAVs1,111,112. The 6G network is supposed to achieve ubiqui-
tous coverage, and UAV-based communication is suitable to
improve the network coverage flexibly. As the vision of 6G
in Ref.1 pointed out, the 6G network is supposed to support
full coverage, full spectra, full applications and strong security.
Therefore, various types of UAV communications are promis-
ing candidate techniques in 6G. For instance, the 6G network
is supposed to provide ubiquitous network accessibility. When
there is no ground communication infrastructure or the
ground base station is damaged due, UAVs can be employed
as aerial base stations to provide network coverage temporar-
ily. With the advantages of low-cost and flexible deployment,
UAV communications can be utilized in a wide range of appli-
cations. For example, UAVs can work as aerial base stations
to provide network coverage for isolated ground users, as
mobile relays to ferry data between nodes without direct links,
as data collectors in harsh environment where it is costly or
dangerous for human to access, and as computers to provide
computing services for edge users with low computing capac-
ity. However, the limited onboard energy restricts the lifetime
of these applications. Therefore, green UAV communications
in these applications are extensively investigated. The typical
applications of UAV communications are shown in Fig. 3.
5.1. UAV aerial base stations
One of the typical applications of UAVs is serving as aerial
base stations to provide wireless coverage for multiple ground
users. This is especially useful when the terrestrial base station
is temporarily damaged and fast response is required to con-
Table 3 Summary of techniques to achieve green UAV
communications.
Techniques References
Exploiting Placement of 14,34,41,45,46,50–52,92
UAV’s UAVs
mobility Trajectory 15,19,20,22,27,32–34,36–
planning for 38,41,44,49,58,60,61,64,67,100
UAVs
Power allocation 15,18–20,22,27,32–
37,40,42,43,58,59,97,98
Directional transmission 35,44,96,101,102
More spectrum 103–107
Energy harvesting 67–84,110
Green UAV communications for 6G: A survey
nect the ground users113. Since the onboard energy of UAVs is
finite, energy-saving techniques are required to prolong the
lifetime of UAVs. For quasi-static aerial base stations, the
rotary-wing UAVs are deployed at fixed positions to serve
the ground users. In this case, the UAV needs constant power
to hover, and the main design objective is to reduce the
communication-related energy consumption. Although quasi-
static deployment of UAV base stations is easy to implement,
exploiting the mobility of UAVs brings new degrees of free-
dom for UAV-assisted networks. The UAV can fly close to
the desired user to achieve better channel conditions. This kind
of mobile UAV base stations is shown to achieve better perfor-
mance than static UAVs12. Note that the energy consumption
of UAVs varies with velocity and acceleration. The propulsion
energy for flying UAVs needs to take into consideration when
optimizing the energy consumption of UAV-enabled net-
works. In Ref.114, a multiple aerial base stations enabled
downlink transmission was investigated to reduce the energy
consumption.
5.2. UAV relaying
In outdoor applications without terrestrial communication
infrastructure, UAVs can be rapidly deployed to provide
network access. In this case, UAVs are employed as relays
to connect the isolated devices with the help of macro base
stations. This application of UAVs is especially useful in
emergency situations such as military operations and disaster
rescue. Due to the flexible deployment and low cost, UAV-
enabled relaying systems have aroused tremendous research
attentions recently. The initial research results about UAV
relaying mainly focus on the transmission rate, throughput
and reliability, with the energy consumption of UAV not
fully considered. Considering limited energy budget for com-
munication and propulsion, the 3D trajectory and power
were jointly optimized to minimize the outage probability
Fig. 3 Typical applications of UAV communications.
29
for a UAV-enabled relaying system with mobile ground
users in Ref.115. As an energy-limited flying communication
platform, the energy-saving UAV relay has become a hot
topic recently60. In UAV-enabled relaying systems, the sum
power consumption problem was studied in Ref.20 by jointly
optimizing the transmit power and trajectory. With limited
transmit power budget, the joint position and power alloca-
tion optimization was proposed to maximize the sum rate of
a two-way relay UAV in Ref.46. However, Ref.20 and Ref.46
only consider the energy for communication, the UAV’s
propulsion energy consumption is ignored. Since the propul-
sion energy is much higher than the communication-related
energy, the propulsion energy cannot be ignored when
designing the trajectory of UAV relay. The green design of
UAV-enabled relaying system considering the propulsion
energy was investigated in Refs.43,57–59.
5.3. UAV data gathering
In harsh environment without terrestrial communication
infrastructures, wireless sensor networks can be deployed to
sense the environment. However, collecting data from these
areas can be costly or even dangerous. In this case, UAV-
enabled data gathering is a promising solution. Since these sen-
sors usually have no fixed power supply, the energy-saving
designs for the sensor nodes and the UAV are both critical
challenges. One energy-saving UAV trajectory is flying circu-
larly due to its constant speed and trajectory. For data gather-
ing in WSN with circular flight of fixed-wing UAVs, the
energy-efficient trajectory radius adjustment and routing were
studied in Ref.97. In Ref.37, the energy consumption minimiza-
tion of a rotary-wing UAV for data gathering in IoT was opti-
mized under the UAV’s energy constraint. Since the sensors in
WSN are energy limited, saving energy for the sensors is a crit-
ical challenge for green UAV-enabled data gathering net-
works. The energy minimizing of sensors was investigated by
30
jointly optimizing the sensor nodes’ wakeup schedule and
UAV’s trajectory22. As analyzed in Ref.61, there exists a trade-
off between the system throughput and energy efficiency.
Therefore, Lin et al. proposed a scheme to balance the system
throughput and energy efficiency by optimizing the UAV fly-
ing speed and altitude, as well as the frame length. In Ref.62,
receding horizon optimization was employed to maximize the
energy efficiency of UAV data collecting system. In Ref.63,
blockchain was introduced into UAV data collecting net-
works, where both the security and energy efficiency can be
improved. The energy-efficient controlling of UAVs for data
collecting in smart cities was investigated in Ref.64.
5.4. UAV-enabled mobile edge computing
Mobile edge computing can provide low-latency computing ser-
vice for the nodes with limited computing capacity and far from
the cloud. UAV is able to carry computing processors and pro-
vide computing service for the isolated nodes. In UAV-enabled
mobile edge computing system, except the energy for propulsion
and data transmission, the computing of the edge computer’s
Central Processing Unit (CPU) is also energy consuming. Note
that the energy consumption of CPU increases cubically with
respect to the CPU frequency, this implies that more energy is
required to finish a specific computation task with higher CPU
frequency, which leads to low computation latency. Thus, there
exists a tradeoff between the energy consumption and latency.
One typical application of UAV-enabled MEC lies in IoT. Most
of the sensors are energy constrained and have limited computing
capacity. Thus, UAVs are deployed to provide MEC. In MEC
systems, energy is required for data uploading, computing and
downloading. Thus, the energy consumption for the IoT nodes
and the UAV needs to be carefully designed to save energy and
prolong the lifetime. In a UAV-enabled MEC system, the
UAV energy consumption minimization was investigated in
Ref.38, where both the propulsion energy and the computing
energy are taken into consideration. In Ref.38, the fixed-wing
UAV energy consumption model in Ref.32 was employed. When
a UAV is serving as a mobile user in a cellular network, the com-
puting capacity of the terrestrial base station is much higher than
the UAV. Thus, the computation tasks of the UAV can be
offloaded to the base station for MEC. This scenario was inves-
tigated in Ref.40, where the UAV’s trajectory, power allocation
and base station scheduling are jointly optimized to minimize
the UAV’s total energy consumption including energy for fly,
computation and communication. Considering the security of
data offloading, the energy efficiency of a secure UAV-enabled
MEC was studied by optimizing the number of bits, transmit
power and time for offloading in Ref.66. It is worth noting that
for UAV-enabled MEC systems, saving energy may lead to high
delay for the computing tasks. The energy-delay tradeoff was
studied in Ref.116, where the energy consumption and the delay
were jointly minimized. The energy consumption minimization
problem for UAV-enabled MEC system was also studied in
Ref.98 by optimizing the resource and the UAV’s trajectory.
5.5. Energy harvesting with UAVs
UAVs not only can be deployed to rapidly build temporary
wireless links or work as edge computing nodes, but also can
be used for energy harvesting. UAVs with large-capacity bat-
X. JIANG et al.
teries can provide wireless energy for the low-power IoT nodes
without fixed power supply. Radio frequency wireless power
transfer is a promising technique for UAVs to charge IoT
nodes68,117. For instance, UAV can be employed to charge
the low-power receivers69. In UAV-enabled mobile edge com-
puting systems, the UAV-served nodes are usually on the
ground, which have limited battery energy and computing
capacity. Thus, the ground nodes can be charged by UAV-
assisted WPT. This case was investigated in Ref.81 and
Ref.82, where the UAV provides mobile edge computing and
wireless power transfer service simultaneously for the low-
power IoT nodes, and the resources are jointly optimized to
minimize the energy consumption of the UAV.
5.6. UAV-assisted backscatter communication
Backscatter communication is based on reflecting the induced
wireless signals, which requires in principle only a switch. Energy
consuming signal processing devices such as mixers, amplifiers
or filters are not needed118. Thus, backscatter communication
has ultralow power consumption and low device complexity.
Although backscatter communication was initially proposed
for short range communication, recent advances have shown
the potential of achieving communication range for hundreds
of meters or even kilometers. Thus, UAV-assisted backscatter
communication is becoming a promising technique for ultralow
power communication recently. In Ref.119, the UAV was
employed as a carrier transmitter to assist the backscatter com-
munication. If there is no direct link between the backscatter
device and the receiver, the UAV can also work as a data
relay119. The UAV can work as a receiver to collect data in back
scatter wireless sensor networks, where the UAV trajectory and
sensor activation decisions can be jointly optimized to enhance
the reliability of backscatter communication120. The energy effi-
ciency of UAV-assisted backscatter communication for data col-
lection was investigated in Ref.121 and Ref.122, which show that
by employing the mobility of UAVs, the energy efficiency of
UAV-assisted backscatter communication can be significantly
improved. The above-mentioned research results show that
employing UAVs is a promising solution to achieve green
backscatter communication.
6. Open research issues
The previous sections reviewed the typical techniques and
applications for green UAV communications. However, these
are far from enough to realize green UAV communications.
Since the total onboard energy of small UAVs is limited,
new energy source and techniques to support green UAV-
enabled wireless networks are required. In the following, sev-
eral potential issues for green UAV communications in 6G
are discussed.
6.1. Prolonging UAV’s lifespan
The UAV’s lifespan is limited by the batter capacity. There-
fore, the UAV is only able to provide communication service
temporarily. Although the energy-saving UAV networks has
been studied extensively, the recharging of UAVs has not been
fully investigated. In Ref.30, the battery swapping, recharging,
and wireless power transfer of UAVs were discussed. These
Green UAV communications for 6G: A survey
measures are helpful to prolong the lifetime of UAVs. Besides
wireless energy harvesting, one technique to prolong the
UAV’s lifespan is hot battery swapping. It is shown in
Ref.123 that the UAV can automatically land into the charging
station and swap its battery within one minute.
Furthermore, new techniques can be employed to improve
the energy density of batteries. Nikkei Asian Review predicts
that the energy density of lithium-ion battery can be improved
by 20% to 30% till it reaches a performance ceiling in 2025124.
In Ref.30, it is shown that hydrogen fuel cell, lithium-sulfur and
lithium-air batteries have much higher energy density than the
current lithium-ion batteries. However, the safety drawbacks
delay the commercialization of these advances of batteries.
6.2. Accurate propulsion energy consumption model
Although the propulsion energy consumption models for fixed-
wing and rotary-wing UAVs are proposed in Ref.32 and Ref.33,
respectively, these models are simplified, and cannot describe
the practical energy consumption accurately. In Ref.32, the pro-
posed energy consumption model only considers level flight for
fixed-wing UAVs, where the ascending, descending, as well as
deceleration have not been considered. For the rotary-wing
UAV power consumption model proposed in Ref.33, the energy
consumption for acceleration and deceleration is ignored, and
only level flight is considered. Therefore, these models cannot
accurately describe the practical energy consumption of UAVs
accurately. To achieve green UAV communication in future 6G
networks, exploring more accurate UAV energy consumption
models remains an open research challenge.
6.3. Exploiting renewable energy
Most UAVs are powered by fuel or electricity currently. In
UAV-enabled networks, the UAVs can also be powered by
renewable energies such as wind and solar energy125. For
example, the Facebook Aquila project aims at providing
network coverage by solar-powered high-altitude UAVs. With
wings wider than Boeing 737, the Aquila is assumed to cover a
region of more than 100 km31. The photoelectric efficiency of
solar cell is the main constraint of solar-powered UAVs. Thus,
energy management is required to achieve longer endurance.
In Ref.126, the energy management for target tracking solar-
powered UAV was investigated. With wind, temperature, air
density considered, two energy management strategies were
proposed according to the application scenarios. The airfoil
for a solar-powered UAV was studied in Ref.127 by considering
the aerodynamic performance and the manufacturing feasibil-
ity of the wing with solar panels.
Wind is another kind of renewable energy that can be
exploited by UAVs. In the Google Loon project, the stratified
wind currents in the stratosphere were employed for positioning
in Ref.128. The solar and wind powered UAVs for communica-
tion were investigated in Ref.129, where the relation among the
transmit power, flight time and harvested energy was explored.
6.4. Tradeoff between energy and coverage
Since the UAV has high altitude, it is likely to provide LoS air-
ground channels, which is helpful to have better network cov-
31
erage than terrestrial communication nodes. However, there
exists a tradeoff between the energy consumption and coverage
for UAV communications. If the UAV wants to connect a
longer distance, more energy is needed due to the larger path
loss. In addition, for solar-powered UAVs, higher altitude is
usually helpful to obtain better environment for harvesting
the solar energy. However, higher altitude leads to larger path
loss, which requires more energy to communicate with the
ground users. Therefore, in practical UAV communication
systems, the coverage of UAVs needs to be carefully designed
to save energy.
7. Conclusions
The employment of UAVs for communication has been a hot
topic in recent years. Benefiting from low cost, high possibility
of LoS channels and flexible deployment, UAV communica-
tions are considered as a promising technique for future 6G
networks. By employing UAVs as aerial communication
nodes, wireless communication links can be established
rapidly, especially in emergency situations such as military
operations and disaster rescue. However, the limited onboard
energy severely constrains the applications of UAVs in the
future. Thus, developing green UAV communications for 6G
is a critical issue. In this article, recent advances on the green
UAV communications for 6G have been surveyed. The types
of UAVs and their energy consumption models are introduced.
In addition, the metrics and typical techniques for green UAV
communications have been introduced. Furthermore, the typ-
ical applications and design issues for green UAV communica-
tions have been investigated. Finally, the open research issues
and promising techniques are also pointed out.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing
financial interests or personal relationships that could have
appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by the National Key R&D Program
of China (No. 2020YFB1807002), the China Postdoctoral
Science Foundation (No. 2020M680949), the Open Research
fund of State Key Laboratory of Integrated Services Net-
works, China (No. ISN22-22), and the National Natural
Science Foundation of China (Nos. 61871065 and U1836201).
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