Latency Minimization for UAV-Enabled URLLC-Based Mobile Edge Computing Systems

In this paper, we consider an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-enabled mobile edge computing (MEC) system, where multiple ground devices offload portions of their latency-sensitive and mission-critical computational tasks to a UAV-carried MEC server for remote computing and compute the remaining portions locally. To meet the low-latency requirements of the MEC, ultra-reliable and low-latency communication (URLLC) is used to offload tasks from the devices to the UAV. We minimize the maximum computation latency among all devices by jointly optimizing the computing times and CPU frequencies of the devices and the UAV, the offloading bandwidths of the devices, and the three-dimensional location of the UAV. We propose an algorithm that decomposes the joint optimization problem into three subproblems, which optimize the UAV’s horizontal location, the UAV’s altitude, and the offloading bandwidths and computing CPU frequencies, respectively. In solving the subproblems, the data rate expression of the devices’ finite-blocklength offloading is accurately approximated by a tractable logarithmic function, and the successive convex approximation technique is applied to tackle the non-convex structure. Furthermore, a semi-closed-form solution to the subproblem that optimizes the bandwidths and CPU frequencies is derived to reduce the complexity. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can significantly reduce the system’s computation latency compared to the benchmark schemes.