Swarm I

I. Trelea

Liang Zhao, Tianyu Li, Enchao Zhang, Yun Lin, Shaohua Wan, Ammar Hawbani, Mohsen Guizani

Vehicular Edge Computing (VEC) is the transportation version of Mobile Edge Computing (MEC). In VEC, task offloading enables vehicles to offload computing tasks to nearby Roadside Units (RSUs), thereby reducing the computation cost. Recent trends in task offloading cause a proliferation of studies in academia. However, the existing offloading schemes still face many challenges, such as high-dynamic network topology, massive and complex data, dynamic scenes with high-speed vehicles and low-latency requirements. Digital Twin (DT)-based VEC is emerging as a promising solution. It monitors the state of the VEC network in real time through mappings and interactions between the physical and virtual entities. Consequently, the task offloading scheme can make more reasonable offloading decisions at the physical layer and further improve the efficiency of VEC. Above all, we propose a VEC computing offloading scheme, namely, Adaptive <underline>S</underline>warm Intelligent Offloading Scheme Based on Digital-<underline>T</underline>win-Assisted P<underline>R</underline>ediction <underline>I</underline>n <underline>VE</underline>C (STRIVE). The VEC network architecture is established to combines DT with an improved Generative Adversarial Network (GAN). The powerful prediction ability of GAN is used to assist in constructing DT in the pre-processing phase, reducing the size of the decision space. To adapt to the dynamic nature of VEC, we establish an adaptive model to adjust the real-time parameter under various scenarios. Then, we deploy an improve<underline>D</underline> genet<underline>I</underline>c simulat<underline>E</underline>d annealing-ba<underline>SE</underline>d partic<underline>L</underline>e swarm optimization (DIESEL) algorithm to task offloading decision-making, which can provide reliable computing services for vehicles at a lower cost. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can effectively reduce computing delay and energy consumption compared with its counterparts.

E. Zaitseva, V. Levashenko, R. Mukhamediev, N. Brînzei, Andriy Kovalenko, A. Symagulov

Drones, or UAVs, are developed very intensively. There are many effective applications of drones for problems of monitoring, searching, detection, communication, delivery, and transportation of cargo in various sectors of the economy. The reliability of drones in the resolution of these problems should play a principal role. Therefore, studies encompassing reliability analysis of drones and swarms (fleets) of drones are important. As shown in this paper, the analysis of drone reliability and its components is considered in studies often. Reliability analysis of drone swarms is investigated less often, despite the fact that many applications cannot be performed by a single drone and require the involvement of several drones. In this paper, a systematic review of the reliability analysis of drone swarms is proposed. Based on this review, a new method for the analysis and quantification of the topological aspects of drone swarms is considered. In particular, this method allows for the computing of swarm availability and importance measures. Importance measures in reliability analysis are used for system maintenance and to indicate the components (drones) whose fault has the most impact on the system failure. Structural and Birnbaum importance measures are introduced for drone swarms’ components. These indices are defined for the following topologies: a homogenous irredundant drone fleet, a homogenous hot stable redundant drone fleet, a heterogeneous irredundant drone fleet, and a heterogeneous hot stable redundant drone fleet.

L. Benson, E. A. Phillips, P. Wilder

W. Lo, H. Chung, R. T. Hsung, Hong Fu, Tak-Wai Shen

Photovoltaic (PV) panels are one of the popular green energy resources and PV panel parameter estimations are one of the popular research topics in PV panel technology. The PV panel parameters could be used for PV panel health monitoring and fault diagnosis. Recently, a PV panel parameters estimation method based in neural network and numerical current predictor methods has been developed. However, in order to further improve the estimation accuracies, a new approach of PV panel parameter estimation is proposed in this paper. The output current and voltage dynamic responses of a PV panel are measured, and the time series of the I–V vectors will be used as input to an artificial neural network (ANN)-based PV model parameter range classifier (MPRC). The MPRC is trained using an I–V dataset with large variations in PV model parameters. The results of MPRC are used to preset the initial particles’ population for a particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. The PSO algorithm is used to estimate the PV panel parameters and the results could be used for PV panel health monitoring and the derivation of maximum power point tracking (MMPT). Simulations results based on an experimental I–V dataset and an I–V dataset generated by simulation show that the proposed algorithms can achieve up to 3.5% accuracy and the speed of convergence was significantly improved as compared to a purely PSO approach.