Energy-Efficient Information Placement and Delivery Using UAVs

This article focuses on minimizing the energy consumption of a fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) disseminating information to a set of Internet of Things devices. In the considered scenario, each device wants to download a subset of files from a library of files. Considering the storage capacity of the UAVs, a framework is provided that minimizes energy consumption by optimally selecting the contributing UAVs, placing files, and planning the trajectory of each contributing UAV. In this framework, a combinatorial optimization problem is formulated, which is hard to solve directly for a practical number of devices, files, and/or UAVs. In order to tackle this challenge, we develop three solution approaches, namely, a multichromosome genetic algorithm (GA), a hybrid genetic-ant colony algorithm, and a GA with heuristic file placement. Results show that the proposed solution approaches minimize the total energy consumption and provide near-optimal solutions. Results also illustrate that the proposed framework optimizes the number of UAVs participating in the information delivery mission.