No Arabic abstract
Edge computing-enhanced Internet of Vehicles (EC-IoV) enables ubiquitous data processing and content sharing among vehicles and terrestrial edge computing (TEC) infrastructures (e.g., 5G base stations and roadside units) with little or no human intervention, plays a key role in the intelligent transportation systems. However, EC-IoV is heavily dependent on the connections and interactions between vehicles and TEC infrastructures, thus will break down in some remote areas where TEC infrastructures are unavailable (e.g., desert, isolated islands and disaster-stricken areas). Driven by the ubiquitous connections and global-area coverage, space-air-ground integrated networks (SAGINs) efficiently support seamless coverage and efficient resource management, represent the next frontier for edge computing. In light of this, we first review the state-of-the-art edge computing research for SAGINs in this article. After discussing several existing orbital and aerial edge computing architectures, we propose a framework of edge computing-enabled space-air-ground integrated networks (EC-SAGINs) to support various IoV services for the vehicles in remote areas. The main objective of the framework is to minimize the task completion time and satellite resource usage. To this end, a pre-classification scheme is presented to reduce the size of action space, and a deep imitation learning (DIL) driven offloading and caching algorithm is proposed to achieve real-time decision making. Simulation results show the effectiveness of our proposed scheme. At last, we also discuss some technology challenges and future directions.
Terrestrial communication networks have experienced significant development in recent years by providing emerging services for ground users. However, one critical challenge raised is to provide full coverage (especially in dense high-rise urban environments) for ground users due to scarce network resources and limited coverage. To meet this challenge, we propose a high altitude platform (HAP)-reserved ground-air-space (GAS) transmission scheme, which combines with the ground-to-space (G2S) transmission scheme to strengthen the terrestrial communication and save the transmission power. To integrate the two transmission schemes, we propose a transmission control strategy. Wherein, the ground user decides its transmission scheme, i.e., switches between the GAS link transmission and the G2S link transmission with a probability. We then maximize the overall throughput and derive the optimal probability that a ground user adopts the GAS transmission scheme. Numerical results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed transmission control strategy.
The air-ground integrated network is a key component of future sixth generation (6G) networks to support seamless and near-instant super-connectivity. There is a pressing need to intelligently provision various services in 6G networks, which however is challenging. To meet this need, in this article, we propose a novel architecture called UaaS (UAVs as a Service) for the air-ground integrated network, featuring UAV as a key enabler to boost edge intelligence with the help of machine learning (ML) techniques. We envision that the proposed UaaS architecture could intelligently provision wireless communication service, edge computing service, and edge caching service by a network of UAVs, making full use of UAVs flexible deployment and diverse ML techniques. We also conduct a case study where UAVs participate in the model training of distributed ML among multiple terrestrial users, whose result shows that the model training is efficient with a negligible energy consumption of UAVs, compared to the flight energy consumption. Finally, we discuss the challenges and open research issues in the UaaS.
Ubiquitous intelligence has been widely recognized as a critical vision of the future sixth generation (6G) networks, which implies the intelligence over the whole network from the core to the edge including end devices. Nevertheless, fulfilling such vision, particularly the intelligence at the edge, is extremely challenging, due to the limited resources of edge devices as well as the ubiquitous coverage envisioned by 6G. To empower the edge intelligence, in this article, we propose a novel framework called AGIFL (Air-Ground Integrated Federated Learning), which organically integrates air-ground integrated networks and federated learning (FL). In the AGIFL, leveraging the flexible on-demand 3D deployment of aerial nodes such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), all the nodes can collaboratively train an effective learning model by FL. We also conduct a case study to evaluate the effect of two different deployment schemes of the UAV over the learning and network performance. Last but not the least, we highlight several technical challenges and future research directions in the AGIFL.
By pushing computation, cache, and network control to the edge, mobile edge computing (MEC) is expected to play a leading role in fifth generation (5G) and future sixth generation (6G). Nevertheless, facing ubiquitous fast-growing computational demands, it is impossible for a single MEC paradigm to effectively support high-quality intelligent services at end user equipments (UEs). To address this issue, we propose an air-ground collaborative MEC (AGC-MEC) architecture in this article. The proposed AGC-MEC integrates all potentially available MEC servers within air and ground in the envisioned 6G, by a variety of collaborative ways to provide computation services at their best for UEs. Firstly, we introduce the AGC-MEC architecture and elaborate three typical use cases. Then, we discuss four main challenges in the AGC-MEC as well as their potential solutions. Next, we conduct a case study of collaborative service placement for AGC-MEC to validate the effectiveness of the proposed collaborative service placement strategy. Finally, we highlight several potential research directions of the AGC-MEC.
Task offloading in Internet of Vehicles (IoV) involves numerous steps and optimization variables such as: where to offload tasks, how to allocate computation resources, how to adjust offloading ratio and transmit power for offloading, and such optimization variables and hybrid combination features are highly coupled with each other. Thus, this is a fully challenge issue to optimize these variables for task offloading to sustainably reduce energy consumption with load balancing while ensuring that a task is completed before its deadline. In this paper, we first provide a Mixed Integer Nonlinear Programming Problem (MINLP) formulation for such task offloading under energy and deadline constraints in IoV. Furthermore, in order to efficiently solve the formulated MINLP, we decompose it into two subproblems, and design a low-complexity Joint Optimization for Energy Consumption and Task Processing Delay (JOET) algorithm to optimize selection decisions, resource allocation, offloading ratio and transmit power adjustment. We carry out extensive simulation experiments to validate JOET. Simulation results demonstrate that JOET outperforms many representative existing approaches in quickly converge and effectively reduce energy consumption and delay. Specifically, average energy consumption and task processing delay have been reduced by 15.93% and 15.78%, respectively, and load balancing efficiency has increased by 10.20%.