Collaborative relay for achieving long-term and low-AoI data collection in UAV-aided IoT systems

In Internet of Things (IoT) systems, sensor nodes are frequently placed in remote and unattended locations to monitor environmental data. One significant challenge is ensuring the timely and efficient transmission of data generated by these sensor nodes back to the base station. The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can provide a practical solution to this challenge by acting as mobile relay nodes for facilitating data transmission. In most existing works, UAVs are typically restricted to collecting data within their designated areas and returning to the base station for data offloading, resulting in suboptimal data timeliness due to long-distance flights. A limited number of works have explored the utilization of relay collaboration by UAVs for data collection, enabling efficient and immediate transmission of sensor node data to the base station. Nevertheless, UAVs positioned at significant distances from the base station face challenges in obtaining timely energy replenishment. This makes them unable to effectively support long-duration data collection missions. In order to tackle these challenges, we develop a UAV-aided IoT collaborative data collection mechanism and propose a matching games-based data collection (MGDC) scheme. In this scheme, we begin by identifying convergence nodes within the ground sensor network, responsible for uploading sensor-generated data to passing UAVs. Furthermore, we divide the mission area into multiple subareas based on the number of available UAVs. Subsequently, using a matching game algorithm, we establish relay relationships between UAVs to enable efficient relay transmissions among paired UAVs. To achieve efficient data collection of UAVs, we employ an improved adaptive large neighborhood search (IALNS) algorithm for UAV flight path planning. Finally, we incorporate an alternating charging mode to ensure all UAVs have the opportunity to return to the base station for energy recharge. Through comprehensive experimentation, we confirm the significant enhancement provided by our proposed data collection scheme compared to existing schemes. This scheme effectively reduces system age of information (AoI) and extends the runtime of the system.