Energy Minimization in Backcom-Assisted Airground Integrated Relay WP-MEC Networks

Backscatter communication (BackCom), as a key low-power communication technology for 6 G IoT, is constrained in its application within mobile edge computing (MEC) due to its short-range transmission and dual near-far effect. This paper addresses the BackCom-assisted non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) wireless power supply MEC network, introducing a relay cooperation mechanism for the first time and constructing a collaborative optimization model for multi-device resource allocation and system operation duration. This paper starts from the perspective of minimizing system energy consumption and jointly optimizes terminal devices, local computation and offloading durations, reflection coefficients, offloading power, relay node offloading durations, as well as the wireless power supply time of airships and the computation time of MEC servers. It constructs a resource allocation and timing coordination optimization model under the premise of meeting QoS and other constraints. To address the challenge of deep coupling between multidimensional resources and timing, a two-stage decomposition algorithm based on alternating optimization is proposed: first, the time slot allocation subproblem is decoupled, and then the resource allocation subproblem is solved under fixed timing. The approximate optimal solution is obtained through alternating iterations. Simulation results show that this algorithm significantly reduces system energy consumption in various network scenarios, outperforming existing benchmark schemes.