Computation bits enhancement for IRS-assisted multi-UAV wireless powered mobile edge computing systems

Abstract

Mobile edge computing (MEC) and wireless energy transfer are two important paradigms to improve the computation bits and provide more cost-effective energy for low-power internet of things (IoT) devices. However, the performance of energy transfer and task offloading is significantly affected by propagation loss, and hence the links between IoT devices and transmitters are frequently blocked. To address this issue, in this paper, an intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRS) system is utilized to enhance the energy harvesting and task offloading performances in a multi-unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-assisted MEC system. Also, a power beacon (PB) is deployed in the coverage area to provide suitable and stable energy for UAVs via a laser charging system. The sum computation bits of all IoT devices are maximized by jointly optimizing transmit power, time allocation, the phase shift in the energy transfer stage, the phase shift in the task offloading stage, CPU frequency of IoT devices, and UAVs’ trajectory. An alternate search method (ASM) is proposed to tackle the non-convexity of the formulated problem in which the closed-form expressions of transmit power, time allocation, the phase shift in the task offloading stage, and CPU frequency are derived. Also, the semidefinite relaxation (SDR) approach and successive convex approximation (SCA) methods are exploited to obtain the phase shifts in the energy transfer stage and UAVs’ trajectory via CVX optimizer, respectively. The numerical evaluations confirm the performance gain of the proposed IRS-assisted multi-UAV MEC system compared to existing benchmark designs.