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.
