Joint Optimization of UAV Trajectory and Sensor Uploading Powers for UAV-Assisted Data Collection in Wireless Sensor Networks

In this article, we investigate the energy minimization problem of an unmanned-aerial-vehicle (UAV)-assisted data collection sensor network. We jointly optimize the trajectory of the UAV and the power consumption of the sensors for data uploading with the power and energy constraints of sensors. The trajectory design consists of two parts: 1) the serving orders for sensors and 2) the UAV’s hovering positions, where the latter is highly coupled with the power consumption of the sensors. To find the optimal serving orders of sensors, we formulate the problem as a standard traveling salesman problem (TSP), which can be optimally solved by the efficient Cutting-Plane method. To solve the UAV position and sensor uploading power optimization problem, we propose the PSPSCA algorithm that optimizes the transmit power by the pattern search method, while the UAV’s hovering positions are optimized by the successive-convex-approximation (SCA) method in the inner loop. To deal with the high computational complexity of the PSPSCA algorithm, we analyze the analytical relationship between optimal sensor uploading power and the UAV’s hovering positions, based on which we simplify the optimization problem and propose the AQSCA algorithm as an alternative approach. Simulation results have validated that the proposed algorithm outperforms the existing benchmark schemes.