Vehicular Edge Computing (VEC) is the transportation version of Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) in road scenarios. One key technology of VEC is task offloading, which allows vehicles to send their computation tasks to the surrounding Roadside Units (RSUs) or other vehicles for execution, thereby reducing computation delay and energy consumption. However, the existing task offloading schemes still have various gaps and face challenges that should be addressed because vehicles with time-varying trajectories need to process massive data with high complexity and diversity. In this paper, a VEC-based computation offloading model is developed with consideration of data dependency of tasks. The minimization of the average response time and average energy consumption of the system is defined as a combinatorial optimization problem. To solve this problem, we propose a M obility-aware d e pendent ta s k o ffloadi n g (MESON) Scheme for urban VEC and develop a DRL-based algorithm to train the offloading strategy. To improve the training efficiency, a vehicle mobility detection algorithm is further designed to detect the communication time between vehicles and RSUs. In this way, MESON can avoid unreasonable decisions by lowering the size of the action space. Moreover, to improve the system stability and the offloading successful rate, we design a task priority determination scheme to prioritize the tasks in the waiting queue. The experimental results show that MESON is superior compared to other task offloading schemes in terms of the average response time, average system energy consumption, and offloading successful rate.

Vehicular computation offloading is a well-received strategy to execute delay-sensitive and/or compute-intensive tasks of legacy vehicles. The response time of vehicular computation offloading can be shortened by using mobile edge computing that offers strong computing power, driving these computation tasks closer to end users. However, the quality of communication is hard to guarantee due to the obstruction of dense buildings or lack of infrastructure in some zones. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), therefore, have become one of the means to establish communication links for the two ends owing to its characteristics of ignoring terrain and flexible deployment. To make a sensible decision of computation offloading, nevertheless vehicles need to gather offloading-related global information, in which Software-Defined Networking (SDN) has shown its advances in data collection and centralized management. In this paper, thus, we propose an SDN-enabled UAV-assisted vehicular computation offloading optimization framework to minimize the system cost of vehicle computing tasks. In our framework, the UAV and the Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) server can work on behalf of the vehicle users to execute the delay-sensitive and compute-intensive tasks. The UAV, in a meanwhile, can also be deployed as a relay node to assist in forwarding computation tasks to the MEC server. We formulate the offloading decision-making problem as a multi-players computation offloading sequential game, and design the UAV-assisted Vehicular computation Cost Optimization (UVCO) algorithm to solve this problem. Simulation results demonstrate that our proposed algorithm can make the offloading decision to minimize the Average System Cost (ASC).

In the aftermath of disasters, localization of trapped victims is imperative to ensure their safety and rescue. This article presents a novel localization and path planning approach that uses unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The UAVs can extract one-hop neighbor information from the devices that may have run out of power by using directed wireless power transfer (WPT). The one-hop neighbor information corresponds to range measurements, which may or may not contain noise. For the noiseless case, we present a customized online graph traversal approach that minimizes the search energy of the UAV and the number of unlocalized nodes. The lower limits on the various performance aspects of this joint approach are presented. For a noiseless case, the results of UAV travel distance and cells searched show a decreasing trend with an increase in the number of maximum neighbors. These curves approximately approach their corresponding lower limits when the number of maximum neighbors is increased beyond 9. For the case of noisy range measurements, using the same objective function and graph traversal algorithm, the probabilistic region for search is determined that gives the least probability of flip errors. To this end, we further optimize the UAV flight path and its search energy in the probabilistic region through clustering. The proposed method is able to achieve linear scaling of the area searched with respect to the noise level. For a given noise level and increasing number of nodes, the UAV search energy with clustering can reduce the energy cost to 70%.

This century has been a major avenue for revolutionary changes in technology and industry. Industries have transitioned towards intelligent automation, relying less on human intervention, resulting in the fourth industrial revolution, Industry 4.0. That is why IoT has been the researcher’s arena for quite some time. With Industry 4.0 still in motion, the world is on the verge of the 5th industrial revolution, a relatively new concept with many unclear opinions regarding its potential benefits, challenges, opportunities, trends, and impact on society. There is a dire need for a broader and more critical perspective. This research paints a bigger picture of “What is happening?” and “What to expect?” during the transition phase of Industry 5.0. In this comprehensive review, we have addressed the state-of-the-art practices in Industry 4.0 and the transitional phase of Industry 5.0. We have highlighted the most promising key enabling technologies, trends, research topics, rising challenges, and unfolding opportunities that can help prepare society for this paradigm shift. The paper then surveys the work toward the outstanding key enablers, challenges, trends, and opportunities for the IoT evolution for Industry 5.0. To spur further avenues for researchers and industrialists, the paper offers conclusive insights at the end. In addition, the article has a precise set of research questions answered in consequent sections and subsections for the reader’s clarity.

Vehicle Edge Computing (VEC) is a promising paradigm that exposes Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) to road scenarios. In VEC, task offloading can enable vehicles to offload the computing tasks to nearby Roadside Units (RSUs) that deploy computing capabilities. However, the highly dynamic network topology, strict low-delay constraints, and massive data of tasks of VEC pose significant challenges for implementing efficient offloading. Digital Twin-based VEC is emerging as a promising solution that enables real-time monitoring of the state of the VEC network through mapping and interaction between the physical and virtual worlds, thus assisting in making sound offload decisions in the physical world. Thus, this paper proposes an intelligent partial offloading scheme, namely, Digital Twin-Assisted Intelligent Partial Offloading (IGNITE). First, to find the optimal offloading space in advance, we combine the improved clustering algorithm with the Digital Twin (DT) technique, in which unreasonable decisions can be avoided by reducing the size of the decision space. Second, to reduce the overall cost of the system, Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) algorithm is employed to train the offloading strategy, allowing for automatic optimization of computational delay and vehicle service price. To improve the efficiency of cooperation between digital and physical spaces, a feedback mechanism is established. It can adjust the parameters of the clustering algorithm based on the final offloading results in this clustering. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study on DT-assisted vehicle offloading that proposes a feedback mechanism, forming a complete closed loop as prediction-offloading-feedback. Extensive experiments demonstrate that IGNITE has significant advantages in terms of total system computational cost, total computational delay, and offloading success rate compared with its counterparts.

Wireless Power Transfer (WPT) is a disruptive technology that allows wireless energy provisioning for energy-limited IoT devices, thus decreasing the over-reliance on batteries and wires. WPT could replace conventional energy provisioning (e.g., energy harvesting) and expand to be deployed in many of our daily-life applications, including but not limited to healthcare, transportation, automation, and smart cities. As a new rising technology, WPT has attracted many researchers from academia and industry about WPT technologies and wireless charging scheduling algorithms. Therefore, in this paper, we review the most recent studies related to WPT, including classifications, advantages, disadvantages, and main domains of application. Furthermore, we review the recently designed wireless charging scheduling algorithms (schemes) for wireless sensor networks. Our study provides a detailed survey of wireless charging scheduling schemes covering the main scheme classifications, evaluation metrics, application domains, advantages, and disadvantages of each charging scheme. We further summarize trends and opportunities for applying WPT at some intersections.