Optimizing Energy and Data Collection in UAV-aided IoT Networks using Attention-based Multi-Objective Reinforcement Learning

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Toure, Babacar, Tsilimantos, Dimitrios, Esrafilian, Omid, Kountouris, Marios
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2026
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author Toure, Babacar
Tsilimantos, Dimitrios
Esrafilian, Omid
Kountouris, Marios
author_facet Toure, Babacar
Tsilimantos, Dimitrios
Esrafilian, Omid
Kountouris, Marios
contents Due to their adaptability and mobility, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are becoming increasingly essential for wireless network services, particularly for data harvesting tasks. In this context, Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based approaches have gained significant attention for addressing UAV path planning tasks in large and complex environments, bridging the gap with real-world deployments. However, many existing algorithms suffer from limited training data, which hampers their performance in highly dynamic environments. Moreover, they often overlook the inherently multi-objective nature of the task, treating it in an overly simplistic manner. To address these limitations, we propose an attention-based Multi-Objective Reinforcement Learning (MORL) architecture that explicitly handles the trade-off between data collection and energy consumption in urban environments, even without prior knowledge of wireless channel conditions. Our method develops a single model capable of adapting to varying trade-off preferences and dynamic scenario parameters without the need for fine-tuning or retraining. Extensive simulations show that our approach achieves substantial improvements in performance, model compactness, sample efficiency, and most importantly, generalization to previously unseen scenarios, outperforming existing RL solutions.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_14092
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
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spellingShingle Optimizing Energy and Data Collection in UAV-aided IoT Networks using Attention-based Multi-Objective Reinforcement Learning
Toure, Babacar
Tsilimantos, Dimitrios
Esrafilian, Omid
Kountouris, Marios
Machine Learning
Networking and Internet Architecture
Due to their adaptability and mobility, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are becoming increasingly essential for wireless network services, particularly for data harvesting tasks. In this context, Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based approaches have gained significant attention for addressing UAV path planning tasks in large and complex environments, bridging the gap with real-world deployments. However, many existing algorithms suffer from limited training data, which hampers their performance in highly dynamic environments. Moreover, they often overlook the inherently multi-objective nature of the task, treating it in an overly simplistic manner. To address these limitations, we propose an attention-based Multi-Objective Reinforcement Learning (MORL) architecture that explicitly handles the trade-off between data collection and energy consumption in urban environments, even without prior knowledge of wireless channel conditions. Our method develops a single model capable of adapting to varying trade-off preferences and dynamic scenario parameters without the need for fine-tuning or retraining. Extensive simulations show that our approach achieves substantial improvements in performance, model compactness, sample efficiency, and most importantly, generalization to previously unseen scenarios, outperforming existing RL solutions.
title Optimizing Energy and Data Collection in UAV-aided IoT Networks using Attention-based Multi-Objective Reinforcement Learning
topic Machine Learning
Networking and Internet Architecture
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.14092