In this paper, we study the network of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) which acts as a relay between a base station, and remotely deployed Internet of Things devices. UAVs have received much attention for connecting remotely located networks/objects, but there is a lack of study on multi-hop relay transmission schemes over UAV networks. It is particularly challenging because of the their high mobility, and limited resources, to name a few. In this regard, we propose an energy-efficient, cooperative multi-hop relay scheme for UAVs. We formulate the optimal multi-hop transmission scheduling problem to minimizes the power consumption of UAVs without violating the given time constraint. We convert the initial formulation into a low-complex iterative algorithm, making it suitable for an online scheduling. Also, we propose a buffer prediction, and correction scheme to initiate the multi-hop transmission scheduling without having the perfect buffered data information. Evaluation results show that the proposed scheme can energy-efficiently schedule the multi-hop transmissions over dynamic UAVs without violating the time constraints.

中文翻译：

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通过协作多跳无人机网络为物联网网络收集节能数据

在本文中，我们研究了无人机 (UAV) 网络，该网络充当基站和远程部署的物联网设备之间的中继。无人机在连接远程网络/物体方面备受关注，但缺乏对无人机网络多跳中继传输方案的研究。由于它们的高机动性和有限的资源，仅举几例，这尤其具有挑战性。在这方面，我们为无人机提出了一种节能、协作的多跳中继方案。我们制定了最优多跳传输调度问题，以在不违反给定时间约束的情况下最小化无人机的功耗。我们将初始公式转换为低复杂度的迭代算法，使其适用于在线调度。此外，我们提出了一个缓冲区预测，以及在没有完美缓冲数据信息的情况下发起多跳传输调度的校正方案。评估结果表明，所提出的方案可以在不违反时间限制的情况下高效地调度动态无人机上的多跳传输。