Joint Trajectory and Beamforming Optimization for AAV-Relayed Integrated Sensing and Communication With Mobile Edge Computing

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate joint trajectory and beamforming design for autonomous aerial vehicle (AAV)-relayed integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) systems with mobile edge eomputing (MEC) under the clutter environment. Due to the limited on-board computing capability, the AAV has to offload sensing echoes to the base station (BS) for efficient processing. A novel relay-based ISAC-then-offload frame structure is considered. We aim to maximize the throughput of the BS-AAV-user relaying link while ensuring sensing accuracy and efficient sensing data offloading. The non-convex problem is solved using an alternating optimization algorithm based on successive convex approximation (SCA). Simulation results illustrate that our proposed algorithm achieves near-optimal communication performance while guaranteeing sensing accuracy, addressing the balance between the communication and sensing performance. Furthermore, we evaluate the impact of critical system parameters including sensing constraints, power control factor, and AAV flight duration on communication performance, and explore the trade-offs between energy efficiency and spectral efficiency under varying sensing data intensity and offloading duration.