Hierarchical-Projected Scheduling for Mission-Critical Vehicular Edge Computing

Multiobjective Optimization-driven Task Scheduling in Vehicular Cloud Environments

SkySched: A Hierarchical and Scalable Reinforcement Learning Framework for Multi-UAV Vehicular Edge Computing Network

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly deployed as embodied aerial agents in low-altitude economies, forming mobile aerial edge networks that enable flexible computation offloading for vehicles. However, their limited endurance and frequent join/leave behaviours result in highly dynamic topologies, undermining long-term resource availability. Moreover, existing vehicle-centric task scheduling strategies cause resource contention and decision complexity in dense environments. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a hierarchical and scalable reinforcement learning-based scheduling framework (SkySched). In SkySched, UAVs collaboratively make deployment and task scheduling decisions. The framework consists of two tightly coupled modules. First, an adaptive UAV deployment module introduces a capability encoding mechanism that compresses heterogeneous UAV attributes into a unified one-dimensional capability index. This compact representation enables a Scalable Proximal Policy Optimization (SPPO) algorithm to efficiently coordinate UAV positioning, maximizing task coverage and sustaining network-wide computing availability under dynamic topology variations. Second, a hierarchical task scheduling module is designed, where K-means-based Roadside Unit (RSU) clustering enables vertical task offloading, while a SPPO-driven horizontal UAV-to-UAV task redistribution mechanism achieves fine-grained load balancing across the UAV swarm. Simulations demonstrate that SkySched consistently outperforms state-of-the-art methods in terms of task coverage and load fairness, validating its effectiveness as an agentic AI-driven embodied networking solution for UAV-assisted vehicular edge computing.

Traffic-Aware Embodied Edge Intelligence for Vehicular Networks: An Integrated VLM and MAPPO Approach

Vehicular edge computing (VEC) has emerged as a key paradigm to support computation-intensive and delay-sensitive vehicular applications by offloading tasks from vehicles to nearby multi-access edge computing (MEC) servers. However, in realistic urban environments, task processing performance is heavily affected by heterogeneous vehicle-MEC interactions, spatiotemporal traffic dynamics, and continuously varying vehicle populations. To address these challenges, this paper considers a traffic-aware embodied edge intelligence-enabled vehicular network (EEIVN), where edge intelligence is grounded in the physical traffic environment by integrating VLM-based semantic perception with edge decision making. Based on this architecture, we formulate a reliability-constrained delay minimization problem (RDMP) by jointly optimizing task offloading ratio, computing resource allocation, and vehicle association, while constraining the queue reliability to mitigate queue-induced tail delay. To solve the NP-hard RDMP, we propose a VLM-multi-agent proximal policy optimization (VLM-MAPPO) approach that integrates a VLM-based traffic awareness method, a vehicle-adaptive MAPPO algorithm, and a vehicle association scoring and selection mechanism. Extensive simulations based on SUMO and CARLA demonstrate that the proposed VLM-MAPPO approach outperforms benchmarks in terms of task completion delay and tail delay, while maintaining comparable vehicle energy consumption and exhibiting robust scalability under dynamic traffic conditions and varying vehicle densities.

Drift-Plus-Penalty-Based Joint Optimization of Computational Resource Scheduling, Power Control, and UAV Flight Decisions in UAV-Enabled Mobile Edge Computing

A Lyapunov-based joint optimization framework for UAV-enabled MEC systems achieves a balanced tradeoff between delay, energy consumption, and UAV flight activity, supporting energy-efficient and delay-aware UAV-MEC operation.

Advanced Adaptive Scheduling for Autonomous Driving in Beyond-5G/6G Networks

SOVANET+ is presented, an extended scheduling technique that jointly accounts for service criticality, network load, and wireless link quality to allocate resources adaptively across coexisting Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) services, supporting its viability for next-generation intelligent transportation systems.

Collaborative resource allocation in UAV-assisted MEC networks: A heterogeneous MAPPO scheme

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-assisted mobile edge computing (MEC) is a key enabler for meeting the stringent low-latency and energy-efficiency requirements of emerging low-altitude economy applications. However, achieving these objectives remains challenging due to dynamic environments, limited communication and computation resources, and the heterogeneity of network entities. This paper investigates the long-term joint optimization framework that minimizes system-wide latency and energy consumption simultaneously by coordinating UAV association, subchannel selection, uplink/downlink power allocation, and computational resource distribution. This sequential decision-making process is formulated into a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) to account for localized observations and dynamic channel states. To solve it, we propose a heterogeneous multi-agent proximal policy optimization (MAPPO)-based framework where both user devices (UDs) and UAVs act as heterogeneous agents. This architecture utilizes a centralized training and decentralized execution (CTDE) paradigm to enable collaborative strategies between computing requesters and providers. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed scheme effectively navigates the high-dimensional action space and achieves superior convergence and cost reduction compared to benchmarks, including PPO, independent PPO (iPPO), Q-learning multi-agent extension (QMIX), value decomposition networks (VDN), independent deep Q-network (iDQN), and genetic algorithm (GA).