Energy-Efficient Data Aggregation and Collection for Multi-UAV-Enabled IoT Networks

As Internet of Things (IoT) networks grow larger, the amount of data that needs to be collected at a fusion center increases rapidly. However, data collection based solely on multi-hop routing between IoT sensor nodes or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) visiting all IoT sensor nodes may not be scalable as the network size increases. To overcome such limitation, a general multi-UAV-enabled data aggregation and collection method utilizing both multi-hop and UAV routing is proposed to minimize the weighted sum of the transmission energy of nodes and the traveling energy of UAVs. An efficient joint construction of node clusters, cluster heads, and UAV routing paths is proposed by utilizing data aggregation of IoT packets. It is demonstrated that the proposed hybrid scheme significantly reduces the weighted sum energy compared to several benchmark schemes, while maintaining low computational complexity.