Optimizing the Coverage via the UAVs with Lower Costs for Information-Centric Internet of Things

Abstract

The recent developments in the areas of the Internet of Things (IoTs) have provided a rapid growth in the epoch of the novel information-centric collections (IC-IoTs). In the IC-IoTs, expanding the ranges of information collections and reducing the costs are important issues for the information required platform. In the previous scenarios, the information is collected in a random manner, which leads to lower coverages and higher costs. Thus, a 'optimizing the coverage via the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with lower costs for information-centric Internet of Things' (OCLC-IoTs) approach is established, which targets to improve the coverage ratio and to reduce the costs of the information-required platform via the cooperation of the information collectors and the UAVs. First, to improve the coverage ratio, an intensive strategy is proposed to inspire the information collectors to bid for the tasks published by the platform and an improved rolling horizon strategy (IRHS) strategy is designed to plan the flying routes of the UAVs to reach more coverage ranges. Then, to reduce the costs factor, the IRHS strategy is designed to shorten the flying routes of the UAVs under the prerequisite of guaranteeing coverage ratio to achieve fewers costs. Finally, a comprehensive theoretical analysis and experiments are provided, which indicates the advancements of the OCLC-IoTs scheme. Compared with the previous studies, the OCLC-IoTs scheme can improve the coverage ratio of information by 21.42% approximately and can reduce the cost ratio by 13.335% to 34.32%.