A computing offloading strategy for UAV based on improved bat algorithm

Abstract

In the process of multi-UAVs cooperative reconnaissance operations, due to the limited battery capacity and computing resources of the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), processing tasks can not only lead to excessive delay, but also increase the energy consumption of the UAV, which reduces the endurance time of the UAV. Therefore, we have proposed a mobile edge computing (MEC) system architecture composed of single unmanned helicopter (UH) and multiple reconnaissance UAVs. Among them, the UH as a MEC server to provide computing services for reconnaissance UAVs. By solving the computing offloading strategy problem of multi-UAVs, the objective is to minimize the weighted sum of energy consumption and delay for the multi-UAVs' task execution. In solving the problem, previous heuristic algorithms such as the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) are often used as basic algorithms for research, but they tend to converge early, fall into local optimum easily, and have low solution accuracy, making it difficult to obtain the optimal offloading strategy. Therefore, this paper proposes an improved bat algorithm (IBA) with fast convergence ability and global search ability. Through the simulation experiments and comparative analysis of PSO, BA, IPSO and IBA, it is proved that the IBA is more accurate, stable, and efficient in solving this problem based on the system architecture proposed in this paper, and effectively reduces the weighted sum of energy consumption and delay for the multi-UAVs' task execution.