Application of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Wireless Networks : Mobile Edge Computing and Caching

With the increasing popularity of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in wireless networks it has now become a necessity to maximize its potential; hence the idea of using UAVs as base stations (BSs) has been proposed. Fifth-generation (5G) mobile networks have incorporated the idea of Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) in its architecture for applications that will ensure low latency and improve the reliability of the communication. By the use of this edge computing and effective caching in conjunction with the UAVs acting as BS, data can be transferred to mobile users with high efficiency and accuracy. In this chapter, it is discussed on the UAV-based MEC architecture. In terms of communication mobile users have direct access to the UAV-BS. In such network, a mathematical model is provided using Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) method for both uplink and downlink communication. Moreover, mathematical expressions of transmission delay, computing, time consumption and energy consumption have derived. Numerical result shows that the total delay is 0.16% more than the processing delay at signal-to-noise ratio of 30 dB.