Abstract

Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) is considered as one of the key enablers of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) use cases. However, the envisioned MEC deployments introduce new challenges related to the management of the mobility of services across the distributed MEC hosts, following the UAVs movements and possible handovers to ensure sustainable Quality-of-Service (QoS). A major challenge for MEC service mobility is the decision-making on where and when to relocate services. In this paper, we motivate the use of the predefined flight plans of UAVs for devising proactive relocation strategies that can deal efficiently with realistic asynchronous relocation processes. Moreover, we formulate the Proactive Service Relocation for UAV (PSRU) problem using linear programming, and we validate the gains introduced by the proactive relocation strategy and the use of the predefined flight plans of UAVs.