UAV-Assisted Multi-Access Edge Computing With Altitude-Dependent Computing Power

In unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-assisted multi-access edge computing (MEC) systems, where UAVs act as aerial relays to forward tasks from ground users (GUs) to remote edge servers (ESs) for processing, a crucial observation is that the computing power in the system depends on the computing capabilities at a single ES and the number of ESs covered by the UAV. The latter is essentially influenced by the UAV altitude, ES density, transmit power of the UAV, channel condition, etc. In this paper, we model a UAV-assisted MEC system featuring adjustable UAV altitude, random GU distribution, and random ES distribution. We adopt the signal-to-noise ratio-based coverage probability and derive a computing model to characterize communication-aware altitude-dependent computing power. Upon this, we model the sequential task-processing process, including task uploading, forwarding, and computing, as a three-stage tandem queue ( M / D /1 → D /1 → D /1). Employing queueing theory, we derive analytical results for the end-to-end (e2e) service latency. Besides, we address the optimization problem of maximizing the number of completed tasks within the e2e latency constraint, referred to as task service throughput. Simulation and analytical results show that optimal UAV altitudes, yielding the maximum task computing throughput, can be obtained under given network parameters.