{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,11]],"date-time":"2025-10-11T02:44:50Z","timestamp":1760150690783,"version":"build-2065373602"},"reference-count":48,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"1","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2023,12,22]],"date-time":"2023-12-22T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1703203200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"Special Industrial Technology Research Project of Jilin Province","award":["2022C047-8","JJKH20181130KJ"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2022C047-8","JJKH20181130KJ"]}]},{"name":"\u201cThirteenth Five-Year Plan\u201d of Provincial Science and Technology of Education Department of Jilin Province, Research on Large-scale D2D Access and Traffic Balancing Technology for Heterogeneous Wireless Networks","award":["2022C047-8","JJKH20181130KJ"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2022C047-8","JJKH20181130KJ"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Mobile edge computing is critical for improving the user experience of latency-sensitive and freshness-based applications. This paper provides insights into the potential of non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) convergence with heterogeneous air\u2013ground collaborative networks to improve system throughput and spectral efficiency. Coordinated resource allocation between UAVs and MEC servers, especially in the NOMA framework, is addressed as a key challenge. Under the unrealistic assumption that edge nodes contribute resources indiscriminately, we introduce a two-stage incentive mechanism. The model is based on contract theory and aims at optimizing the utility of the service provider (SP) under the constraints of individual rationality (IR) and incentive compatibility (IC) of the mobile user. The block coordinate descent method is used to refine the contract design and complemented by a generative diffusion model to improve the efficiency of searching for contracts. During the deployment process, the study emphasizes the positioning of UAVs to maximize SP effectiveness. An improved differential evolutionary algorithm is introduced to optimize the positioning of UAVs. Extensive evaluation shows our approach has excellent effectiveness and robustness in deterministic and unpredictable scenarios.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s24010074","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2023,12,22]],"date-time":"2023-12-22T08:53:01Z","timestamp":1703235181000},"page":"74","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":3,"title":["Enhancing Data Freshness in Air-Ground Collaborative Heterogeneous Networks through Contract Theory and Generative Diffusion-Based Mobile Edge Computing"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"24","author":[{"given":"Zhiyao","family":"Sun","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Electronic Information Engineering, Changchun University of Science and Technology, Changchun 130000, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Guifen","family":"Chen","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Electronic Information Engineering, Changchun University of Science and Technology, Changchun 130000, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2023,12,22]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2322","DOI":"10.1109\/COMST.2017.2745201","article-title":"A survey on mobile edge computing: The communication perspective","volume":"19","author":"Mao","year":"2017","journal-title":"IEEE Commun. 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