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Traditional task scheduling methods often struggle to handle the complex interactions between vehicle-side energy consumption, edge-side operational costs, and system stability. To address this, we propose a novel two-layer hybrid framework that integrates the Improved Whale Optimization Algorithm (IWOA) with fractional programming (FP) and Lyapunov Drift-Plus-Penalty (DPP) for IoV task scheduling. Our approach decouples the global search of discrete decisions from the optimization of continuous variables, ensuring both efficiency and stability. Experimental results show that our method outperforms benchmark algorithms in terms of energy consumption and latency, achieving up to a 27.08% reduction in total energy consumption and a 25.56% improvement in average latency compared to existing solutions.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1007\/s44163-026-00854-8","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,1,28]],"date-time":"2026-01-28T08:52:43Z","timestamp":1769590363000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/springer_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["An improved whale optimization algorithm for efficient task scheduling in the internet of vehicles"],"prefix":"10.1007","volume":"6","author":[{"given":"Huiyong","family":"Li","sequence":"first","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Shuhe","family":"Han","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Yang","family":"Yang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]}],"member":"297","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,1,28]]},"reference":[{"issue":"2","key":"854_CR1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"193","DOI":"10.3390\/electronics10020193","volume":"10","author":"M Ben Bezziane","year":"2021","unstructured":"Ben Bezziane M, Korichi A, Kerrache CA, Fekair MEA. 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