UAV-Assisted Data Collection for Internet of Things: A Survey

Thanks to the advantages of flexible deployment and high mobility, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been widely applied in the areas of disaster management, agricultural plant protection, environment monitoring, and so on. With the development of UAV and sensor technologies, UAV-assisted data collection for the Internet of Things (IoT) has attracted increasing attention. In this article, the scenarios and key technologies of UAV-assisted data collection are comprehensively reviewed. First, we present the system model, including the network model and the mathematical model of UAV-assisted data collection for IoT. Then, we review the key technologies, including clustering of sensors, UAV data collection mode as well as joint path planning and resource allocation. Finally, the open problems are discussed from the perspectives of efficient multiple access as well as joint sensing and data collection. This article hopefully provides some guidelines and insights for researchers in the area of UAV-assisted data collection for IoT.