AoI-Minimal Power and Trajectory Optimization for UAV-Assisted Wireless Networks

In this paper, we consider an Internet of Things (IoT) system where the employed unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) carries edge computing server to perform data collection and execution for multiple IoT nodes (INs). For such a network, UAV trajectory and uplink transmission power optimization are integrated to minimize the Age of Information (AoI) of the results returned to all ground INs subject to energy consumption limitations. Due to the non-convex nature of the formulated problem, it is divided into two subproblems, which are respectively solved by Lagrangian dual and convex optimization methods, and block coordinate descent method is applied to solve the overall problem. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm achieves the lowest average AoI of all INs compared with other schemes. The results also reveal the relationship between the average AoI and the number of INs and advantages of the proposed scheme.