Joint Optimization Strategy of Task Migration and Power Allocation Based on Soft Actor-Critic in Unmanned Aerial Vehicle-Assisted Internet of Vehicles Environment

Abstract

In recent years, the unmanned aerial vehicle-assisted internet of vehicles has been extensively studied to enhance communication and computation services in vehicular environments where ground infrastructures are limited or absent. However, due to the limited-service range and battery life of unmanned aerial vehicles, along with the high mobility of vehicles, an unmanned aerial vehicle cannot continuously cover and serve the same vehicle, leading to interruptions in vehicular application services. Therefore, this paper proposes a joint optimization strategy for task migration and power allocation based on soft actor-critic (JOTMAP-SAC). First, communication models, computational resource allocation models, and computation models are established sequentially based on the computational resource and dynamic coordinate of each node. The joint optimization problem of task migration and power allocation is then formulated. Considering the dynamic nature of the unmanned aerial vehicle-assisted internet of vehicles environment and the continuity of the action space, a soft actor-critic based algorithm for task migration and power allocation is designed. This algorithm iteratively finds the optimal solution to the joint optimization problem, thereby reducing the processing delay in unmanned aerial vehicle-assisted internet of vehicles and ensuring the continuity of internet of vehicles task processing.