Service Time Maximization for Data Collection in Multi-UAV-Aided Networks

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been enormously gaining attention to offload traffic or collect data in wireless networks due to their key attributes, such as mobility, flexibility, and cost-effective deployment. However, the limited onboard energy inhibits the UAV from serving for a longer duration. Therefore, this article studies a UAV-aided network where multiple UAVs are launched to collect data from the mobile nodes. In particular, we aim to maximize the service time of the UAVs by jointly optimizing the three-dimensional (3D) trajectory of the UAVs and resources allocated to each node by the UAVs such that each mobile node receives a minimum specified data rate. To facilitate a solution, we construct an equivalent problem that considers the UAV's energy consumption. In particular, we minimize the maximum energy consumed by the UAVs in each time slot. To solve the problem, an iterative approach is presented that decouples the problem into two sub-problems. The optimal location of the UAVs is computed in the first sub-problem, while resource allocation is carried out in the second sub-problem. These two sub-problems are solved in an iterative manner using the alternating optimization approach. We show that the proposed approach improves the service time of the network by 20% on average compared to the existing approaches.