Joint Optimization Framework for Minimization of Device Energy Consumption in Transmission Rate Constrained UAV-Assisted IoT Network

Due to their high maneuverability and flexible deployment, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) could be an alternative option for a scenario where Internet of Things (IoT) devices consume high energy to achieve the required data rate when they are far away from the terrestrial base station (BS). Therefore, this article has proposed an energy-efficient UAV-assisted IoT network where a low-altitude quad-rotor UAV provides mobile data collection service from static IoT devices. We develop a novel optimization framework that minimizes the total energy consumption of all devices by jointly optimizing the UAV’s trajectory, devices association, and respectively, transmit power allocation at every time slot while ensuring that every device should achieve a given data rate constraint. As this joint optimization problem is nonconvex and combinatorial, we adopt a reinforcement learning (RL)-based solution methodology that effectively decouples it into three individual optimization subproblems. The formulated optimization problem has transformed into a Markov decision process (MDP) where the UAV learns its trajectory according to its current state and corresponding action for maximizing the generated reward under the current policy. Finally, we conceive state–action–reward–state–action, a low complexity iterative algorithm for updating the current policy of UAV, that achieves an excellent computational complexity-optimality tradeoff. Numerical results validate the analysis and provide various insights on optimal UAV trajectory. The proposed methodology reduces the total energy consumption of all devices by 6.91%, 8.48%, and 9.94% in 80, 100, and 120 available time slots of UAV, respectively, compared to the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm.