AI-Based and Mobility-Aware Energy Efficient Resource Allocation and Trajectory Design for NFV Enabled Aerial Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel deep reinforcement learning approach for energy-efficient resource allocation and trajectory design in UAV-assisted NFV networks, optimizing service quality and reducing delays.

Contribution

It proposes a hierarchical hybrid deep reinforcement learning algorithm for joint trajectory, resource allocation, and VNF migration in UAV networks, addressing energy efficiency and QoS.

Findings

Reduces request reject rate by 31.5%

Decreases average delay by 20%

Increases energy efficiency by 40%

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a novel joint intelligent trajectory design and resource allocation algorithm based on user's mobility and their requested services for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) assisted networks, where UAVs act as nodes of a network function virtualization (NFV) enabled network. Our objective is to maximize energy efficiency and minimize the average delay on all services by allocating the limited radio and NFV resources. In addition, due to the traffic conditions and mobility of users, we let some Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) to migrate from their current locations to other locations to satisfy the Quality of Service requirements. We formulate our problem to find near-optimal locations of UAVs, transmit power, subcarrier assignment, placement, and scheduling the requested service's functions over the UAVs and perform suitable VNF migration. Then we propose a novel Hierarchical Hybrid Continuous and Discrete Action (HHCDA) deep reinforcement learning method to solve our problem. Finally, the convergence and computational complexity of the proposed algorithm and its performance analyzed for different parameters. Simulation results show that our proposed HHCDA method decreases the request reject rate and average delay by 31.5% and 20% and increases the energy efficiency by 40% compared to DDPG method.