Semi-Distributed Resource Management in UAV-Aided MEC Systems: A Multi-Agent Federated Reinforcement Learning Approach

Abstract

Recently, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-enabled multi-access edge computing (MEC) has been introduced as a promising edge paradigm for the future space-aerial-terrestrial integrated communications. Due to the high maneuverability of UAVs, such a flexible paradigm can improve the communication and computation performance for multiple user equipments (UEs). In this paper, we consider the sum power minimization problem by jointly optimizing resource allocation, user association, and power control in an MEC system with multiple UAVs. Since the problem is nonconvex, we propose a centralized multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) algorithm to solve it. However, the centralized method ignores essential issues like distributed framework and privacy concern. We then propose a multi-agent federated reinforcement learning (MAFRL) algorithm in a semi-distributed framework. Meanwhile, we introduce the Gaussian differentials to protect the privacy of all UEs. Simulation results show that the semi-distributed MAFRL algorithm achieves close performances to the centralized MARL algorithm and significantly outperform the benchmark schemes. Moreover, the semi-distributed MAFRL algorithm costs 23<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\%$</tex-math></inline-formula> lower opeartion time than the centralized algorithm.