Fresh data collection for UAV-assisted IoTs based on proximity-remote region collaboration

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) can assist Internet of Things (IoT) systems in collecting data from sensor nodes due to their high flexibility and ease of deployment. However, in existing UAV-assisted IoTs, there is neither mission overlap nor mission collaboration between UAVs, which requires all UAVs to return to the base station to offload the collected data. This results in significant latency in data transmission. Therefore, we propose a proximity-remote region collaborative data collection scheme to overcome this problem. In this scheme, we first divide the mission region into the proximity region and the remote region, and deploy an appropriate ratio of UAVs in each region for data collection. Second, we balance the flight paths of UAVs in different regions by updating the partition. Finally, we achieve seamless relay transmission between UAVs by selecting relay points, modifying UAV flight paths, and adjusting flight speed and take-off points. Through the above process, data collected from the remote region can rapidly reach the base station through seamless collaborative relays between UAVs. Extensive experimental results have shown that the proposed scheme can effectively reduce the data transmission latency of the system compared to existing data collection schemes.