# UAV-Enabled Mobile Edge-Computing for IoT Based on AI: A Comprehensive Review
## 2 UAV System Model
### UAV-Enabled Services  
UAV technology's appealing flexibility and mobility characteristics have drawn attention in terms of integration with other networks as a way to address various challenging applications. UAVs can be a part of IoT networks, referred to as the Internet of Flying Things (IoFT) [25]. The IoFT can improve the availability of IoT services in areas with poor communication coverage and limited infrastructures. For instance, UAVs can provide FC and EC services and cellular communications in rural or developing regions and submarine environments. As a result, reaching hostile and congested environments has become easier and faster, thus improving emergent intervention wherever and whenever it is required. As support to communication networks, UAVs can be dispatched as peripheral nodes with various operating units, such as flying BSs, relay nodes, or end-node stations [7]. UAVs act as relay/terminal nodes related to disconnected nodes, stabilizing communication links in an ad hoc manner. A set of deployed UAVs can thereby form a flying ad hoc network (FANET), which is a subclass of the mobile ad hoc network (MANET) [26]. In IoT networks, UAVs can potentially adopt many recent cellular and non-cellular wireless communication networks to control the UAV on the one hand, and to enhance the coverage and latency services on the other. The most prominent communication protocols that can be used with UAVs are IEEE 802.11 (Wi-Fi), IEEE 802.16 (WiMax), IEEE 802.15.4 (LRWPAN), cellular networks (3G/4G), IEEE 802.15.1 (Bluetooth), LoRaWAN (LoRa), SigFox and narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) [27; 28; 29; 30; 31]. Typically, the choice of communication protocol depends on the desired achievable throughput, power consumption, range, implementation cost, reliability, delay, and security. Grouped according to application requirements, the characteristics of the most-used communication protocols are presented in [32]. As described in Table 2, there are various available communication protocols that can be used in UAV-enabled MEC. Each protocol is given a list of advantages and disadvantages regarding data rate, coverage, deployment cost, energy consumption, latency, spectrum availability, and the number of supported users. Thus, the use of communication technology depends literally on the application requirements. Along with high mobility and scalability, UAVs can offer many potential opportunities in terms of enabling services such as pervasive connectivity, aerial intelligence, self-maintenance capabilities for communications, and sensor deployment. Therefore, UAVs act as airborne BSs [33], data collectors, relay nodes [34], jammers [35], monitors [36], edge- and cloud computing servers [37], and power suppliers [38] to support IoT applications. These will extend network coverage and provide diversified and flexible intelligence facilities for new potentialities in modern IoT applications. In summary, as illustrated in Figure 3, UAVs can facilitate a wide range of solutions in IoT applications. They can provide intelligent communications by establishing wireless networks in inaccessible and hazardous environments; they also enable parallel intelligent areal services, such as CC, EC, and LC.