Latency-Aware Load Distribution Algorithm for Microservice Deployment in UAV Networks

The Internet has become the driving wheel of social interactions as well as economic growth, but its access is vastly unequal. Noticeably, such rural dwellers experience a digital service access gap, due to the inadequate broadband infrastructure available to them when compared with their urban counterparts. This paper is aimed at overcoming the gap between rural communities with no reliable Internet service by deploying the service through the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). By decomposing the Internet of Things (IoT) applications into elements (namely microservices) and deploying them through UAVs, latency is shortened, distributing workload among UAVs while limiting microservice deployment to optimize request execution, making the quality service improvement, essential for such applications. Simulations revealed the effectiveness of our approach, as it indicated the lowest latency when a UAV connected to several users in scenarios where there was no Internet connectivity.