Cooperative Drone-Vehicle Mobile Edge Computing for Low-Altitude Inspection

Abstract

In large areas, mobile edge computing (MEC) systems enabled by drones, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), can provide flexible edge computing services and facilitate low-altitude inspection. Such systems are primarily limited by the computing resources and energy of the drone, as well as their reliance on cellular network infrastructure. To overcome these limitations, this paper investigates a cooperative drone-vehicle MEC system in which a ground vehicle (GV) carries an accompanying drone (AD) and a detached drone (DD) to visit multiple data collection nodes for low-altitude inspection. We develop a joint drone-vehicle model with path planning, data collection, and processing. The AD is carried by the GV to multiple nodes and collects data when the GV is stationed at a node. The DD can detach from the GV to visit other nodes and perform data collection independently. The GV and drones cooperate in data processing and energy replenishment. We propose a heuristic to minimize the low-altitude inspection mission completion time by jointly optimizing the route and the DD speeds. We analyze the relationship between the DD speed and the size of DD-processed data and design a method that includes flight power approximation to optimize the DD speed. Numerical results indicate that solutions optimized by the heuristic fully utilize the DD, thereby reducing the completion time of low-altitude inspection missions.