The Distributed Intelligent Collaboration to UAV-Assisted VEC: Joint Position Optimization and Task Scheduling

Deploying Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as aerial base stations enhances the coverage and performance of communication networks in Vehicular Edge Computing (VEC) scenarios. However, due to the limited communication range and energy capacity of UAVs, they cannot continuously cover entire areas or sustain long flights. Therefore, achieving full communication coverage of a target area with a minimal number of UAVs and efficient task offloading remains a significant challenge. To address this problem, the UAV-assisted Two-stage Intelligent Collaboration (UTIC) method is proposed in this paper to tackle the joint position optimization and task scheduling issue. Firstly, a UAV-assisted Two-stage Task Scheduling (UTTS) system model is designed to optimize the allocation process. Secondly, an Enhanced Particle Swarm Optimization (E-PSO) algorithm is designed to determine the optimal positions of UAVs, ensuring complete coverage of all mobile vehicles (MVs) with the minimum number of UAVs. Thirdly, Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG) method is employed to find the optimal scheduling decisions for MVs, considering energy consumption, delay, and task priorities. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed UTIC method can achieve nearly 20% reduction in UAV deployment and outperform three other classical reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms in terms of reducing system cost.