Energy-Efficient Data Collection for IoT Networks via Cooperative Multi-Hop UAV Networks
Taewoon Kim, Daji Qiao
Abstract
In this paper, we study the network of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) which acts as a relay between a base station, and remotely deployed Internet of Things devices. UAVs have received much attention for connecting remotely located networks/objects, but there is a lack of study on multi-hop relay transmission schemes over UAV networks. It is particularly challenging because of the their high mobility, and limited resources, to name a few. In this regard, we propose an energy-efficient, cooperative multi-hop relay scheme for UAVs. We formulate the optimal multi-hop transmission scheduling problem to minimizes the power consumption of UAVs without violating the given time constraint. We convert the initial formulation into a low-complex iterative algorithm, making it suitable for an online scheduling. Also, we propose a buffer prediction, and correction scheme to initiate the multi-hop transmission scheduling without having the perfect buffered data information. Evaluation results show that the proposed scheme can energy-efficiently schedule the multi-hop transmissions over dynamic UAVs without violating the time constraints.