  Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) aided wireless networks have been recently
envisioned as a solution to provide a reliable, low latency cellular link for
search and rescue operations over the sea. We propose three different network
architectures, based on the technology deployed on the UAV: a flying relay, a
flying Base Station (BS) and a flying Remote Radio Head (RRH). We describe the
challenges and highlight the benefits of the proposed architectures from the
perspective of search and rescue operations over the sea. We compare the
performance in term of data rate and latency, analyzing different solutions to
provide a Backhaul (BH)/Fronthaul (FH) link for long coverage over the sea.
Results show that a system architecture is not outperforming over the others. A
cost function is thus indicated as a tool to find a suboptimal solution.

Signal Processing