Mobile Edge Computing Enabled Internet of Unmanned Things

Mobile edge computing (MEC) is an emerging technology which is becoming an important component in the networking infrastructure supporting Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV). MEC paradigm contributes significantly to the reduction of communication latency and by allowing the presence of cloud-like services such as computation and storage at the edge of the network. UAVs can be viewed as flying Internet of Things (IoT) devices characterized by high mobility and energy scarcity. Therefore, MEC functionalities play an important role in addressing UAV application requirements in terms of resource allocation, task offloading, and energy efficiency optimization. In this chapter, we provide an architectural and functional overview of edge computing for UAV applications deployed in the context of IoT. We review the elements of MEC-assisted IoUT systems, the functionalities offered by MEC to UAV applications, the integration of distributed artificial intelligence (AI) methods in edge computation and the role of cooperative machine learning (ML) in the efficiency of MEC-based UAV applications.