A Decision for Throughput Optimization in UAV-Enabled Emergency Outdoor–Indoor Fairness Communication
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)
Other some little observations:
Pag.7, row 202, give a reference fort he CVX toolkit in Matlab.
Pab.8, give a reference for the SCA method.
Pag.11, rows 233 and 235, it is correct “table3”, maybe it is table4
Pay attention to the order of the cross references in the text
Conclusions have to be improved
Author Response
Please refer to the Word file for detailed responses
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)
(1) The paper lacks in-depth theoretical analysis and evaluation of the proposed method, making it unclear how significant the proposed algorithm's improvements are compared to benchmark algorithms.
(2) The implementation details of the proposed algorithm are not fully provided, making it difficult to reproduce the study and verify the results.
Readability can be further improved by careful proofreading.
Author Response
Please refer to the Word file for detailed responses
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This paper studies UAV-enabled communication systems, where the throughput optimization is optimized with the outdoor–indoor fairness consideration. This topic seems interesting, but UAV-enabled communication systems have been investigated a lot. There are some concerns that should be addressed.
1. How to evaluate the effectiveness of the UAV-user channel model, especially for indoor users.
2. The symbol definition is not clear enough, which may be caused by too many considered variables. Please improve the variable definitions in the system model.
3. The authors mainly consider communication services provided by UAVs, actually, there are other important UAV-aided applications, such as UAV-enabled sensing systems, and UAV-enabled integrated periodic sensing and communication systems. These works should also be discussed in the introductions.
4. There are many typos, e.g., “Problem (??)” on line 175 on Page 6.
5. In the simulation results, the comparison with benchmarks is missing. Please also give brief explanations for the improvement rather than just enumerate the observations.
Author Response
Dear reviewer, please refer to the document for your reply.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
This paper deals with a very interesting topic object of study of many researchers that invstigate the world of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) in the contest of emergency. In particular, they deal with throughput optimization in indoor/outdoor communcation where the UAVs act as a relay in the air for allowing the communication between users. They propose an algorithm for optimizing the UAV location deployment and resource allocation called JLRO.
In the reviewer opinion the paper is diffcult to read and understandig due to a hard mathematical formulation exposition accompanied by some errors and mistakes in the symbols used in the explanation that make so hard to follow the authors argumentation.
Also the paper organization can be improved starting from the introduction and separating it by related works that can be represent a new section.
In pag.4 "(*) denotes coordinates" …
Rows 135-140 can be write better
The symbol Ds,r does not exist … may be ds,r
The phrase related to theta explanation should be rephrased, it is not clear
ATG communication model … it is not clear
NLOG, what is it ?
I have not able to find the reference 25 where the authors state that the beta variables are setted to… but it is not clear what are they ? which beta represents and why ?
Pag.7 row 163, it is not clear
Pag.7 row 175 « in the problem ( ??)… check the reference to …
The section 3 "Algorithm Design" is to better explain, it is very hard to follow with all those equations with all those s.t.. Moreover, there are all a set of symbols that a reader easily lacks the flow, it could be better to introduce a table with the explanation of all symbols used, for example which the different "Q" variables do represent ? It is difficult tio understand in the text. So that it should be provide the reference for the different tools used like CVX toolkit or SCA method.
In the JLRO algorithm pseudocode, instruction 1, may be better to use as apex of "var" not zero but letter "l"
Eq.32, the term delta is not explained in the text
The section related to "Simulation Results" is rich of simulations but the curves explaination should be improved. For example, Figure 2 shows the JLRO convergence but it is not clear why the convergence is related to throughput, can be better explained that and also the statement "When the number of users increases to a certain threshold, the total throughput tends towards stability." What is "a certain threshold" you have done some simulation in order to verify this behavior with a sufficent number of points ?
Table 2 represents the propagation parameters in different environments, but the question is "where the authirs use these different environments ?", in the paper this is not highlighted.
Author Response
Dear reviewer, please refer to the document for your reply.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
This paper proposed a joint UAV location deployment and resource allocation (JLRO) algorithm, which optimized UAV 3D deployment location and power and bandwidth resource allocation. Besides, the algorithm is designed to improve the downlink throughput and ensure communication fairness. Finally, theoretical analysis and numerical simulations were provided to demonstrate that the scheme can maximize the system throughput and ensure fairness of user communication. In addition, the results show the valid convergence of the JLRO algorithm. There are some main problems in the current version that could be revised to improve the paper.
Some major comments are reported below.
- Figure 2 shows the convergence of the JLRO algorithm with the different numbers of users, and the iteration number is around 6. It is better to present the processing time of the iterations to prove the actual performance of the algorithm.
- Can you compare JLRO with state-of-the-art algorithms, such as DRL algorithms?
- What type of modulation are you using in this paper? Do you consider small-scale fading?
- In line 175, the equation reference needs to be corrected.
- Regarding the pseudocode of the JLRO algorithm, what are the var_24 and var_31? Please explain it further.
- In the abstract, the optimization is the downlink throughput, but it mentions the uplink maximization in conclusion. Please correct it.
- Though the paper's overall structure is clear enough, the text quality can still be further improved by careful and thorough proofreading to remove typos and minor grammar errors.
Author Response
Dear reviewer, please refer to the Word document for your reply
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
There are no comparison results in simulations, and the advantages of the proposed method are not well illustrated. The novelty is relatively less. There are still several typos. So, the current version is not recommended for publication.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer, please refer to the content of the attached file for details
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
There is yet something that not sound good… I think that Section 3 is a little bit more hard to follow… anyway I think that a table of symbols can help readers to better follow the problem presentation. Sorry but I have yet not understand Qs parameters meaning.
Find in the tekst “( ref equ7g)” and correct it
Please, can you provide references for CVX toolkit and SCA method?
Author Response
Dear reviewer, please refer to the content of the attached file for details
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
