Self-Organized and Distributed Green Resource Allocation for Space–Air–Ground IoT Networks

To deal with the explosion connections and data volume for emergency communication or hot spot capacity enhancement with massive Internet of Things (IoT) devices, deploying aerial base stations (AeBSs) on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to generate heterogeneous space–air–ground networks is considered to be a quite effective method. However, the flying AeBSs and back-hauling to existing heterogeneous networks (HetNets) lead to network energy consumption a key point. To ensure the energy-efficient operation of space–air–ground networks for smart IoT applications, we put forward the cluster-based HetNets energy-efficient resource allocation mechanism (CHERA). The scheme first divides the entire network into multiple independent BS clusters with the K-means++ algorithm for distributed energy efficiency (EE) optimization. Then, we propose a greedy BS sleeping strategy and a Lagrangian-dual-based optimal power allocation algorithm for the maximization of EE in each BS cluster. The EE optimization of space–air–ground IoT networks is implemented under the self-organizing network framework to make sure of the efficient and reliable operation of the network. Simulation results indicate that energy consumption is effectively decreased with the mechanism. It boosts the EE of space–air–ground networks by 23.8% compared with a baseline algorithm in which BSs are all in active mode with no power optimization. The result is expected to be useful for achieving future green space–air–ground networks IoT applications.