Adaptive Data Collection and Offloading in Multi-UAV-Assisted Maritime IoT Systems: A Deep Reinforcement Learning Approach

Abstract

This paper studies the integration of data collection and offloading for maritime Internet of Things (IoT) systems with multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). In the considered multi-UAV maritime IoT system, the UAVs act as the aerial base stations to complete the missions of data collection from buoys and data offloading to the offshore base station (OBS). In this case, the UAVs need to adaptively select the mission mode between data collection and data offloading according to the network resources and mission requirements. In this paper, we aimed to minimize the completion time of data collection and offloading missions for all UAVs by jointly optimizing the UAV trajectories, mission mode selection, transmit power of buoys, and association relationships between the UAVs and buoy/OBS. In order to solve the mixed-integer non-convex minimization problem, we first designed a multi-agent deep reinforcement learning algorithm based on a hybrid discrete and continuous action space to preliminarily obtain the UAV trajectories, mission mode selection, and the transmit power of buoys. Then, we propose an algorithm based on the stable marriage problem to determine the buoy–UAV and UAV–OBS association relationships. Finally, the simulation results show that the proposed algorithms can effectively shorten the total mission completion time of data collection and offloading for the multi-UAV-assisted maritime IoT system.