Multi-Agent Q-Net Enhanced Coevolutionary Algorithm for Resource Allocation in Emergency Human-Machine Fusion UAV-MEC System

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) assisted communication has emerged as a powerful technology for reliable and flexible emergency communications (e.g., earthquakes, hurricanes and floods), especially when the mobile infrastructure is seriously damaged. UAV assisted mobile edge computing (UAV-MEC) system can be deployed in the natural disaster area as communication relay or air mobile base stations to resume communication and provide computing resources for the users in disaster areas. However, the optimized resource allocation performance of UAV-MEC system can be further guaranteed with the human-fusion decision making. In this paper, we construct an emergency human-machine fusion UAV-MEC system consisting of multiple UAVs equipped with computing resources, and the human-machine decision makings are fused for UAV deployment. In order to solve the resource allocation problem of human-machine fusion UAV-MEC system, we establish an human-machine deep integration model for UAV-MEC system, and the UAVs are dispatched reasonably through human-machine fusion decision makings to maintain efficient communication in emergency communication areas. To minimize task latency and improve the computation efficiency in emergency human-machine fusion UAV-MEC system, we consider the number of dispatched UAVs, deployment plans, flight plans, and simultaneously optimize the task allocation scheme, priority order, and task offloading ratio. We propose a reinforcement learning framework combined with evolutionary algorithms, which is named as multi-agent Q-net enhanced cooperative genetic algorithm (MQCGA), for resource allocation of UAV. Based on neural network forecasts, the greedy rate during training processing can be dynamically controlled, and the learning ability of different agents can be strengthened. Simulation experiments are conducted to evaluate the proposed framework, and the results show that our proposed MQCGA algorithm is significantly superior to other algorithms in terms of latency and energy consumption.
Note to Practitioners
—With the development of MEC and the popularity of UAVs, the potential of UAV-assisted MEC draw much attention from industrial field. Considering the lack of communication capabilities in a certain area in an unexpected situation, UAVs can be quickly deployed to corresponding locations and provide computing services. In this paper, an UAV-MEC system that integrates human-machine decision-making for emergency communication situations, named human-machine fusion UAV-MEC system, is considered. The system divides the scene into regions, models users and UAVs, and provides detailed deployment schemes, maximizing the practicality and applicability of the scene. In order to improve the communication efficiency in the case of emergency communication, this paper proposes a new resource scheduling algorithm and adds human-machine decision-making to enable UAVs to continuously provide efficient services for a certain area. The experimental results provide practitioners with a theoretical basis, such as the task completion time, UAV energy consumption and computing resource scheduling. Applying the system to actual scenarios also requires two preconditions of the system, one is the information collected by the large UAV, and the other is the communication among the UAVs. These two preconditions facilitate the human-machine fusion UAV-MEC system deployment in practical applications.