  Driven by the visions of Internet of Things (IoT), there is an
ever-increasing demand for computation resources of IoT users to support
diverse applications. Mobile edge computing (MEC) has been deemed a promising
solution to settle the conflict between the resource-hungry mobile applications
and the resource-constrained IoT users. On the other hand, in order to provide
ubiquitous and reliable connectivity in wireless networks, unmanned aerial
vehicles (UAVs) can be leveraged as efficient aerial platforms by exploiting
their inherent attributes, such as the on-demand deployment, high cruising
altitude, and controllable maneuverability in three-dimensional (3D) space.
Thus, the UAV-enabled aerial MEC is believed as a win-win solution to
facilitate cost-effective and energy-saving communication and computation
services in various environments. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive
survey on the UAV-enabled aerial MEC. Firstly, the related advantages and
research challenges for aerial MEC are discussed. Then, we provide a
comprehensive review of the recent research advances, which is categorized by
different domains, including the joint optimization of UAV trajectory,
computation offloading and resource allocation, UAV deployment, task scheduling
and load balancing, interplay between aerial MEC and other technologies, as
well as the machine-learning (ML)-driven optimization. Finally, some important
research directions deserved more efforts in future work are summarized.
