A combinatorial ABC algorithm for AoI minimization with reliable data collection in UAV-assisted clustered IoT networks
Applied Soft Computing, cilt.201, 2026 (SCI-Expanded, Scopus)
- Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
- Cilt numarası: 201
- Basım Tarihi: 2026
- Doi Numarası: 10.1016/j.asoc.2026.115697
- Dergi Adı: Applied Soft Computing
- Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Scopus, Applied Science & Technology Source, Compendex, INSPEC
- Anahtar Kelimeler: Age of information (AoI), Artificial bee colony (ABC), Error control (ARQ, FEC), Internet of things (IoT), Reliable data collection, Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)
- Erciyes Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly employed for data collection in Internet of Things (IoT) networks, where fixed infrastructure is unavailable or costly to deploy. Their mobility allows them to serve areas that fixed systems cannot reach across applications such as environmental monitoring, industrial automation, and emergency response. In such applications, outdated data can directly degrade system performance, and the Age of Information (AoI) has become the standard metric for measuring data freshness. However, communication reliability methods introduce additional delay and energy overhead which creates a trade-off with AoI minimization. This study formulates a mixed-integer programming (MIP) model to minimize the average AoI while accounting for the overheads of error control methods such as Automatic Repeat Request (ARQ) and Forward Error Correction (FEC). Since the resulting problem is NP-hard, a K-means clustering-based framework and a modified Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm are used to find near-optimal solutions efficiently. The effects of these error control methods on AoI and packet success rate are evaluated across UAV heights from 65 to 80 m. Simulation results show that at 80 m, FEC maintains above 97% packet success rate with negligible AoI overhead, while the no error control case drops below 3% and ARQ achieves only 6%.