Publisher Copyright: © 2026 IEEE.

Vehicular Edge Computing (VEC) is an essential part of the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) due to its low latency by moving the computational resources close to the edge. Although the introduction of network slicing into VEC improves resource utilization through dynamic resource allocation based on real-time demands and priorities, it increases the deployment and operational costs. In view of this, this paper envisions a resource allocation strategy for VEC based on network slicing technique, in which the tasks involved are not only dynamic but also heterogeneous. To minimize the system cost (including resource consumption and computation, network slice maintenance and reconfiguration costs), this paper proposes CST-RL, a confidence-based self-adjusting two-timescale reinforcement learning algorithm. This solution performs resource allocation and activation scheduling for network slices on a large timescale, while allocating slices to heterogeneous tasks on a short timescale to meet dynamic demands. In addition, we innovatively utilize critic in reinforcement learning to predict and compare the expected benefits of network slices with versus without reconfiguration. We introduce the Random Network Distillation (RND) technique to assess the confidence level of these benefits, thus providing guidance for network slices to automatically decide whether and when to undergo reconfiguration. Finally, we demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of CST-RL through simulations. Results show that CST-RL yields 27.77% lower system cost compared to the scheme without network slicing and 15.15% lower system cost compared to performing constant network slicing configuration, with guaranteed Quality-of-Service.

Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) is a promising solution to achieve higher performances of dual functionalities. However, the existing cell-free/bistatic MIMO ISAC networks struggle to meet strict requirements for data-intensive communication and accuracy-sensitive radar positioning. To further achieve joint enhancement, we propose a novel network where two ISAC transmitters cooperatively perform communication and target positioning, fully leveraging the advantages of cell-free/bistatic principles in communication/radar systems, referred to as bistatic-enhancement MIMO ISAC. An optimization for joint beamforming design is established to maximize the sum data rate for communication users and minimize a novel positioning-enhanced Cramér-Rao lower bound (CRB) that evaluates positioning accuracy under their corresponding requirements. The established problem is solved under two schemes: cooperative block-level and symbol-level beamforming. The solution under the former scheme is derived by an iterative behavior. Under the latter one, inter-user interference is eliminated and co-channel interference is exploited for useful signal enhancement. The problem can be converted into a convex semi-definite problem (SDP) based on semi-definite relaxation (SDR). Experimental results substantiate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms. More importantly, the proposed bistatic-enhancement network improves positioning accuracy by 32.5% ∼ 47.5% over the conventional bistatic-site one under different schemes.

Uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV)-enabled ISAC systems have received widespread attention due to the high mobility of UAVs with good line-of-sight (LoS) paths to ensure communication and sensing performance. However, the existing works on UAV-enabled ISAC mainly focus on optimizing communication performance (e.g., sum rate) and sensing performance, resulting in excessive energy consumption and reducing the flight endurance of the UAV. Motivated by this, we draw a trade-off between such performance and energy consumption to achieve robust and efficient UAV-enabled ISAC. In this work, we aim to maximize the worst-case energy efficiency in UAV-enabled ISAC by jointly designing the beamforming and the UAV trajectory, while ensuring the UAV energy constraints and the ISAC performance. Nevertheless, solving this problem is non-trivial due to its non-convex nature, and the high coupling of the transmit beamforming vectors and the UAV dynamics adds an additional layer of complexity. To effectively address this non-convex issue, we alternately optimize the transmit communication and sense beamforming, as well as the UAV dynamic variables to obtain a sub-optimal solution, and the algorithm complexity is lower than the existing algorithms. Experimental results show a trade-off between energy efficiency and average sum rate. Furthermore, they indicate the superiority of the proposed algorithm to enhance energy efficiency by significantly reducing energy consumption without causing excessive sum rate loss.

On-demand edge computing power networks with both stationary fog nodes co-located with cellular base stations (CFNs) and mobile fog nodes mounted on vehicles (VFNs) provide promising solutions for coping with high spatio-temporal, compute-intensive, and latency-sensitive applications. Joint scheduling and resource allocation in such a network is challenging due to the trade-off between quality of service (QoS) and energy consumption, limited onboard capacity of IoT devices and fog nodes, and urban obstructions that impede line-of-sight links. To address these issues, this work envisions a network assisted by reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) with a multi-layer scheme. The computation tasks are offloaded from IoT devices to VFNs and further to CFNs based on the computational demand and latency requirements, and the RIS assists with wireless communication on both links. We jointly optimized the allocation of the subcarriers, the power, the offloading task bits, the time slot, and the RIS beamforming vectors under the constraints of task input bits and computing capability, to minimize the average energy consumption. To address the non-convex issue, we first decompose it into three sub-problems, and then alternately optimize these sub-problems by adopting successive convex approximation (SCA) where a locally optimal solution can be obtained. Simulation results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed offloading strategy where RIS with a multi-layer scheme is introduced in the on-demand edge computing power networks. Also, the effectiveness, feasibility, scalability, and adaptability of the designed algorithm are verified.

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-enabled massive multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) is an emerging platform to perform communication and sensing efficiently and flexibly. However, the existing works barely consider the radar probing tasks and neglect the benefits of the dedicated sensing signal. In this paper, we focus on joint optimizations in radar probing tasks, and a novel indicator is introduced, namely radar probing error. Two optimizations in radar probing tasks are established: i) joint transmit beamforming design for large-scale regional radar probing and communication task; ii) joint transmit beamforming and UAV trajectory design for communication enhancement and radar probing task. For the former task, we adopt both communication and novel sensing precoders to further support the MIMO radar. A semidefinite relaxation is utilized to relax the original non-convex problem, which is proven to be tight. For the latter task, we adopt block coordinate descent to alternately optimize the precoders and UAV trajectory where the fractional programming approach and successive convex approximation are further adopted. Experiment results testify the validation of the proposed methods for radar probing tasks in UAV-enabled MIMO ISAC. Moreover, results show the fundamental trade-off between the dual functions and reveal the effectiveness of the introduced sensing precoder.

Uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV)-assisted integrated sensing, computation, and communication (ISCC) network enables the entire data analysis process for practical applications. The existing works of UAV-assisted ISCC merely consider a single data source, and there still exist gaps in the collection of environmental data via multiple sources. Motivated by this, we envision a novel UAV-assisted air-ground collaborative ISCC network that fully explores the cooperation between aerial UAVs and ubiquitous ground Internet of Things (IoT) devices. To achieve effective, efficient, and fair joint task scheduling and resource allocation, an optimization is established to minimize two novel indicators, i.e., computation offloading and sensing penalty indices, subject to constraints of boundary, anti-collision, and UAV energy consumption. To tackle this problem, a deep reinforcement learning (DRL) framework is proposed where three advanced DRL algorithms are included under centralized and decentralized control schemes. In former scheme, the central controller makes globally optimal decisions. In latter scheme, multiple agents decide independently based on local information. We demonstrate a forest fire monitoring use case simulated in a national forest park. Results show the mutually interfering, competitive, and beneficial relationships among triple functionalities. Besides, our solution outperforms three state-of-the-art baselines in terms of effectiveness and efficiency.

Integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) is emerging as one of the six application scenarios for future wireless networks. Characterizing the Pareto boundary is an urgent issue in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) ISAC systems. The lack of unified sensing metrics and the neglect of the instantaneous worst-case sensing requirement in the existing works present challenges to this issue. In this paper, we propose a more universal and operable theoretical limit analysis framework where the high-signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) channel capacity is characterized under instantaneous covariance mismatch constraint. We use the covariance mismatch that implies the distance to optimal covariance as the sensing metric. The optimal covariance can be computed by optimizing any key sensing metric. An MIMO ISAC Pareto boundary can be obtained by computing channel capacity under fine-grained sensing thresholds, below which the mismatch must be constrained. In the experiments, three radar modes are considered, and the results show that different radar modes affect capacity performance and a trade-off exists between communication and sensing. In addition, pure communication capacity is the upper bound of the communication capacity in ISAC. Moreover, capacity under instantaneous constraint approaches that under average one in pure MIMO communications when signal length approaches infinity.

Joint task scheduling and resource allocation for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-assisted integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) in emergency rescue activities has become an essential and challenging problem. However, the existing works have only considered such a problem for standalone UAV networks without considering the cooperation between UAVs and ground base stations (BSs), nor have they considered the uncertainty in terms of the availability of BSs due to damage/reconstruction in disaster events. In this paper, we consider a novel post-disaster UAV-assisted ISAC system where the UAVs are used to supplement the networking capacity of out-of-service ground BSs while using their radio signals for sensing. We apply transfer learning with deep reinforcement learning (DRL) to learn task scheduling and resource allocation strategies that can rapidly adapt to uncertainty in the environment. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the state-of-the-art in both communication and sensing performance and convergence speed. Moreover, the transfer learning-based DRL shows faster convergence and better robustness when the availability of BSs suddenly changes.

Integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) has received considerable attention from both industry and academia. By sharing the spectrum and hardware platform, ISAC significantly reduces costs and improves spectral, energy, and hardware efficiencies. To support the large number of communication users (CUs) and sensing targets (STs), the design of multiple access (MA) is a fundamental issue in ISAC. MA techniques in ISAC are expected to avoid mutual interference between sensing and communicating functions under the critical constraints of both functions. In this article, we present an overview on approaches of MA for ISAC, from orthogonal transmission strategies to nonorthogonal ones, realized in time, frequency, code, spatial, delay-Doppler, power, and/or multiple domains. We discuss their individual implementation schemes and corresponding resource allocation strategies, as well as highlight future research opportunities.

Optimizing the trajectory of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Base Station (BS) is an important operational task to improve the Quality of Service (QoS) for remote areas. However, existing works mainly neglect the fair coverage and dynamic Ground Users (GUs). In this paper, we propose a novel coverage fairness index (CFI) to measure whether dynamic GUs are served as fairly as possible. Then, we formulate the problem as a constrained problem with the objective of maximizing fair coverage and minimizing energy consumption while satisfying the bound constraints. An accurate and efficient Soft-Actor-Critic (SAC)-based UAV trajectory optimization algorithm is proposed to solve the complex constrained problem based on deep reinforcement learning. Experiments are executed to prove the feasibility and efficiency of the proposed algorithm. The results manifest that the performance of the proposed algorithm is better than that of the two existing baseline methods.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Base Station (BS) placement optimization is an essential operational task to improve the Quality of Service (QoS) in UAV-aided wireless cellular networks. The existing approaches are almost zeroth order methods, and the few first order methods mainly ignore the allocation fairness, computational efficiency, and backhaul constraints. In this paper, we formulate the UAV placement problem as a constrained optimization problem, with the objective of maximizing the fair coverage versus energy consumption while satisfying the backhaul constraints at different time nodes. To guarantee fair QoS allocation, we introduce a novel fairness index to ensure fair communication opportunity and the novel region coverage ratio to avoid excess QoS on covered spots. An accurate and efficient proximal stochastic gradient descent based alternating algorithm that iteratively executes two optimization steps is proposed to optimize the UAV locations, which enables the fast single point-based first order methods to solve the complex problems with constraints. Experiment results manifest that the proposed algorithm performs well both in synthetic data scenario and in real city scenario. Furthermore, the proposed first order algorithm is more efficient than the existing zeroth order algorithm, typically referring to the meta-heuristic method.

Network coverage and capacity optimization is an important operational task in cellular networks. The network coverage maximization by adjusting azimuths and tilts of antennas is focused and the existing approaches are mainly gradient-free methods. A standard gradient descent algorithm and its improved version, namely a Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) algorithm are proposed on the basis of a novel coverage indicator, named as the soft coverage indicator, to approximate the hard version of the original coverage indicator. We prove that the gradient vector is sparse, which accelerates gradient calculation, due to the number limitation of base stations within a specific distance from a given sampling point even if there are many decision variables of azimuths and tilts. Also, the SGD algorithm only requires a small amount of computation based on cheap estimates of the gradients, and thus is applicable to large-scale networks in an efficient manner. The experiments show that the proposed approaches perform well both in their near-optimal solutions and in their computation efficiency compared with the meta-heuristic algorithms. The extensibility and practicality of the proposed algorithms are also discussed.