Cooperative Digital Twin-Enhanced UAV Topology Optimization for Multi-Target Tracking

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles-based Multiple Targets Tracking (UAV-MTT) has been mainstream in serving mission-critical scenarios for public safety, such as hit-and-run tracking and border patrol. Nonetheless, it is challenging to implement high-efficiency UAV topology control due to the variable moving speeds of targets and the limited sensing and communication resources of UAVs. To address the problem, we propose a terminal-edge cooperative Digital Twin (DT) framework for real-time and accurate MTT. Based on the DT technology, we achieve joint optimization of local and global UAV topologies to track targets with diverse speeds. Explicitly, we construct time-spatial DT models based on temporal and spatial information of targets and UAVs. The DT models can instruct UAVs to dynamically adjust position relations among one-hop neighbors for local topology optimization using our proposed Time Spatial Graph Learning based DT (TSGL-DT) algorithm. UAVs can use the optimization results to invite feasible neighbors to track low-speed moving targets. Our DT models can also allocate feasible UAVs to connect suitable local topologies for global topology optimization. It can achieve cooperative MTT to track high-speed moving targets. The experiment results demonstrate that our solution reduces the MTT latency by 41.2% while improving the successful tracking ratio delivery ratio by 15.6% on average compared to state-of-the-art benchmarks.