# Scaling up Energy-Aware Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Mission-Oriented Drone Networks with Individual Reward

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.24992 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.24992/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 22 of its 55 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 24 May 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 22 of 22)

- [Soft Actor-Critic: Off-Policy Maximum Entropy Deep Reinforcement Learning with a Stochastic Actor](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.01290/) (2018)
- [Addressing Function Approximation Error in Actor-Critic Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.09477/) (2018)
- [Multi-Agent Actor-Critic for Mixed Cooperative-Competitive Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02275/) (2017)
- [Prioritized Experience Replay](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.05952/) (2015)
- [Monotonic Value Function Factorisation for Deep Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.08839/) (2020)
- [QTRAN: Learning to Factorize with Transformation for Cooperative Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.05408/) (2019)
- [Mean Field Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.05438/) (2018)
- [Multiagent Cooperation and Competition with Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.08779/) (2015)
- [A Review of Cooperative Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.03963/) (2019)
- [Shapley Q-value: A Local Reward Approach to Solve Global Reward Games](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.05707/) (2019)
- [CM3: Cooperative Multi-goal Multi-stage Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.05188/) (2018)
- [A Deep Policy Inference Q-Network for Multi-Agent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.07893/) (2017)
- [Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning Based Trajectory Planning for Multi-UAV Assisted Mobile Edge Computing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.11277/) (2020)
- [Delay-Aware Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Cooperative and Competitive Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.05441/) (2020)
- [Cooperative Internet of UAVs: Distributed Trajectory Design by Multi-agent Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.14297/) (2020)
- [Integrating independent and centralized multi-agent reinforcement learning for traffic signal network optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.10651/) (2019)
- [A Collaborative Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning Anti-jamming Algorithm in Wireless Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.04374/) (2018)
- [Reinforcement Learning for Decentralized Trajectory Design in Cellular UAV Networks with Sense-and-Send Protocol](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.02934/) (2018)
- [Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Problems with Combined Individual and Team Reward](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.10598/) (2020)
- [ROER: Regularized Optimal Experience Replay](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.03995/) (2024)
- [Efficient UAV Trajectory-Planning using Economic Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.02676/) (2021)
- [Energy-Aware Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Collaborative Execution in Mission-Oriented Drone Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.22578/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) has shown wide applicability in collaborative systems such as autonomous driving and smart cities for its ability of learning through interaction. With the recent development of drone networks, researchers have also applied MARL to address the trajectory planning problems. However, the dynamic environment and the limited battery capacity are still challenging for using MARL to achieve efficient collaborative task execution. In this paper, we propose an energy-aware MARL model as an attempt to tackle these challenges, leveraging Deep Q-Networks (DQN) with individual reward functions driven by the task execution progress and the remaining battery of drones. We conduct a set of simulation studies for the proposed mode and compare it with the shared reward MARL~citeLi2022MARL to explore the impact of credit assignment in MARL. The results indicate that our proposed model can achieve at least 80% success rate regardless of the task locations and lengths. Similar to the shared reward mode, the individual reward mode can achieve a better success rate when the task density is high, and it can hit nearly a 100% success rate when task density gets close to 40%. The true advantage of our proposed model with individual reward is revealed when scaling up the environment. The comparison to the shared reward MARL shows that the our proposed model is more robust towards the change of the environment size and agent numbers. It can achieve higher success rate with fewer steps due to the clarity of the goal which improves energy efficiency even better.