DRLR: A Deep-Reinforcement-Learning-Based Recruitment Scheme for Massive Data Collections in 6G-Based IoT Networks

Recently, rapid deployment on the fifth-generation (5G) networks has brought great opportunities for enabling data-intensive applications and brings an extending expectation on the developments of 6G. A basic requirement to develop 6G networks is to reach data with low latency, low cost, and high coverage in smart Internet of Things (IoT). Therefore, this article proposes a novel machine learning-based approach to collect data from multiple sensor devices by cooperation between vehicle and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in IoT. First, a genetic algorithm is utilized to select vehicular collectors to collect massive data from sensor devices, which aims to maximize coverage ratio and to minimize employment cost. Second, we design a novel deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based route policy to plan collection routes of UAVs with constrain energy, which simplifies the network model, accelerates training speeds, and realizes dynamic planning of flight paths. The optimal collection route of a UAV is a series of outputs based on the proposed DRL-based route policy. Finally, our extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed scheme can comprehensively improve the coverage ratio of massive data collections and reduce collection costs in smart IoT for the future 6G networks.