Low earth orbit(LEO)satellites with wide coverage can carry the mobile edge computing(MEC)servers with powerful computing capabilities to form the LEO satellite edge computing system,providing computing services for t...Low earth orbit(LEO)satellites with wide coverage can carry the mobile edge computing(MEC)servers with powerful computing capabilities to form the LEO satellite edge computing system,providing computing services for the global ground users.In this paper,the computation offloading problem and resource allocation problem are formulated as a mixed integer nonlinear program(MINLP)problem.This paper proposes a computation offloading algorithm based on deep deterministic policy gradient(DDPG)to obtain the user offloading decisions and user uplink transmission power.This paper uses the convex optimization algorithm based on Lagrange multiplier method to obtain the optimal MEC server resource allocation scheme.In addition,the expression of suboptimal user local CPU cycles is derived by relaxation method.Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can achieve excellent convergence effect,and the proposed algorithm significantly reduces the system utility values at considerable time cost compared with other algorithms.展开更多
Low Earth orbit(LEO)satellite networks have the advantages of low transmission delay and low deployment cost,playing an important role in providing reliable services to ground users.This paper studies an efficient int...Low Earth orbit(LEO)satellite networks have the advantages of low transmission delay and low deployment cost,playing an important role in providing reliable services to ground users.This paper studies an efficient inter-satellite cooperative computation offloading(ICCO)algorithm for LEO satellite networks.Specifically,an ICCO system model is constructed,which considers using neighboring satellites in the LEO satellite networks to collaboratively process tasks generated by ground user terminals,effectively improving resource utilization efficiency.Additionally,the optimization objective of minimizing the system task computation offloading delay and energy consumption is established,which is decoupled into two sub-problems.In terms of computational resource allocation,the convexity of the problem is proved through theoretical derivation,and the Lagrange multiplier method is used to obtain the optimal solution of computational resources.To deal with the task offloading decision,a dynamic sticky binary particle swarm optimization algorithm is designed to obtain the offloading decision by iteration.Simulation results show that the ICCO algorithm can effectively reduce the delay and energy consumption.展开更多
The growing development of the Internet of Things(IoT)is accelerating the emergence and growth of new IoT services and applications,which will result in massive amounts of data being generated,transmitted and pro-cess...The growing development of the Internet of Things(IoT)is accelerating the emergence and growth of new IoT services and applications,which will result in massive amounts of data being generated,transmitted and pro-cessed in wireless communication networks.Mobile Edge Computing(MEC)is a desired paradigm to timely process the data from IoT for value maximization.In MEC,a number of computing-capable devices are deployed at the network edge near data sources to support edge computing,such that the long network transmission delay in cloud computing paradigm could be avoided.Since an edge device might not always have sufficient resources to process the massive amount of data,computation offloading is significantly important considering the coop-eration among edge devices.However,the dynamic traffic characteristics and heterogeneous computing capa-bilities of edge devices challenge the offloading.In addition,different scheduling schemes might provide different computation delays to the offloaded tasks.Thus,offloading in mobile nodes and scheduling in the MEC server are coupled to determine service delay.This paper seeks to guarantee low delay for computation intensive applica-tions by jointly optimizing the offloading and scheduling in such an MEC system.We propose a Delay-Greedy Computation Offloading(DGCO)algorithm to make offloading decisions for new tasks in distributed computing-enabled mobile devices.A Reinforcement Learning-based Parallel Scheduling(RLPS)algorithm is further designed to schedule offloaded tasks in the multi-core MEC server.With an offloading delay broadcast mechanism,the DGCO and RLPS cooperate to achieve the goal of delay-guarantee-ratio maximization.Finally,the simulation results show that our proposal can bound the end-to-end delay of various tasks.Even under slightly heavy task load,the delay-guarantee-ratio given by DGCO-RLPS can still approximate 95%,while that given by benchmarked algorithms is reduced to intolerable value.The simulation results are demonstrated the effective-ness of DGCO-RLPS for delay guarantee in MEC.展开更多
By deploying the ubiquitous and reliable coverage of low Earth orbit(LEO)satellite networks using optical inter satel-lite link(OISL),computation offloading services can be provided for any users without proximal serv...By deploying the ubiquitous and reliable coverage of low Earth orbit(LEO)satellite networks using optical inter satel-lite link(OISL),computation offloading services can be provided for any users without proximal servers,while the resource limita-tion of both computation and storage on satellites is the impor-tant factor affecting the maximum task completion time.In this paper,we study a delay-optimal multi-satellite collaborative computation offloading scheme that allows satellites to actively migrate tasks among themselves by employing the high-speed OISLs,such that tasks with long queuing delay will be served as quickly as possible by utilizing idle computation resources in the neighborhood.To satisfy the delay requirement of delay-sensi-tive task,we first propose a deadline-aware task scheduling scheme in which a priority model is constructed to sort the order of tasks being served based on its deadline,and then a delay-optimal collaborative offloading scheme is derived such that the tasks which cannot be completed locally can be migrated to other idle satellites.Simulation results demonstrate the effective-ness of our multi-satellite collaborative computation offloading strategy in reducing task complement time and improving resource utilization of the LEO satellite network.展开更多
Multi-access Edge Computing(MEC)is one of the key technologies of the future 5G network.By deploying edge computing centers at the edge of wireless access network,the computation tasks can be offloaded to edge servers...Multi-access Edge Computing(MEC)is one of the key technologies of the future 5G network.By deploying edge computing centers at the edge of wireless access network,the computation tasks can be offloaded to edge servers rather than the remote cloud server to meet the requirements of 5G low-latency and high-reliability application scenarios.Meanwhile,with the development of IOV(Internet of Vehicles)technology,various delay-sensitive and compute-intensive in-vehicle applications continue to appear.Compared with traditional Internet business,these computation tasks have higher processing priority and lower delay requirements.In this paper,we design a 5G-based vehicle-aware Multi-access Edge Computing network(VAMECN)and propose a joint optimization problem of minimizing total system cost.In view of the problem,a deep reinforcement learningbased joint computation offloading and task migration optimization(JCOTM)algorithm is proposed,considering the influences of multiple factors such as concurrent multiple computation tasks,system computing resources distribution,and network communication bandwidth.And,the mixed integer nonlinear programming problem is described as a Markov Decision Process.Experiments show that our proposed algorithm can effectively reduce task processing delay and equipment energy consumption,optimize computing offloading and resource allocation schemes,and improve system resource utilization,compared with other computing offloading policies.展开更多
To reduce the transmission latency and mitigate the backhaul burden of the centralized cloud-based network services,the mobile edge computing(MEC)has been drawing increased attention from both industry and academia re...To reduce the transmission latency and mitigate the backhaul burden of the centralized cloud-based network services,the mobile edge computing(MEC)has been drawing increased attention from both industry and academia recently.This paper focuses on mobile users’computation offloading problem in wireless cellular networks with mobile edge computing for the purpose of optimizing the computation offloading decision making policy.Since wireless network states and computing requests have stochastic properties and the environment’s dynamics are unknown,we use the modelfree reinforcement learning(RL)framework to formulate and tackle the computation offloading problem.Each mobile user learns through interactions with the environment and the estimate of its performance in the form of value function,then it chooses the overhead-aware optimal computation offloading action(local computing or edge computing)based on its state.The state spaces are high-dimensional in our work and value function is unrealistic to estimate.Consequently,we use deep reinforcement learning algorithm,which combines RL method Q-learning with the deep neural network(DNN)to approximate the value functions for complicated control applications,and the optimal policy will be obtained when the value function reaches convergence.Simulation results showed that the effectiveness of the proposed method in comparison with baseline methods in terms of total overheads of all mobile users.展开更多
Handling the massive amount of data generated by Smart Mobile Devices(SMDs)is a challenging computational problem.Edge Computing is an emerging computation paradigm that is employed to conquer this problem.It can brin...Handling the massive amount of data generated by Smart Mobile Devices(SMDs)is a challenging computational problem.Edge Computing is an emerging computation paradigm that is employed to conquer this problem.It can bring computation power closer to the end devices to reduce their computation latency and energy consumption.Therefore,this paradigm increases the computational ability of SMDs by collaboration with edge servers.This is achieved by computation offloading from the mobile devices to the edge nodes or servers.However,not all applications benefit from computation offloading,which is only suitable for certain types of tasks.Task properties,SMD capability,wireless channel state,and other factors must be counted when making computation offloading decisions.Hence,optimization methods are important tools in scheduling computation offloading tasks in Edge Computing networks.In this paper,we review six types of optimization methods-they are Lyapunov optimization,convex optimization,heuristic techniques,game theory,machine learning,and others.For each type,we focus on the objective functions,application areas,types of offloading methods,evaluation methods,as well as the time complexity of the proposed algorithms.We discuss a few research problems that are still open.Our purpose for this review is to provide a concise summary that can help new researchers get started with their computation offloading researches for Edge Computing networks.展开更多
The cloud radio access network(C-RAN) and the fog computing have been recently proposed to tackle the dramatically increasing traffic demands and to provide better quality of service(QoS) to user equipment(UE).Conside...The cloud radio access network(C-RAN) and the fog computing have been recently proposed to tackle the dramatically increasing traffic demands and to provide better quality of service(QoS) to user equipment(UE).Considering the better computation capability of the cloud RAN(10 times larger than that of the fog RAN) and the lower transmission delay of the fog computing,we propose a joint resource allocation and coordinated computation offloading algorithm for the fog RAN(F-RAN),which takes the advantage of C-RAN and fog computing.Specifically,the F-RAN splits a computation task into the fog computing part and the cloud computing part.Based on the constraints of maximum transmission delay tolerance,fronthaul and backhaul capacity limits,we minimize the energy cost and obtain optimal computational resource allocation for multiple UE,transmission power allocation of each UE and the event splitting factor.Numerical results have been proposed with the comparison of existing methods.展开更多
Mobile edge computing(MEC)emerges as a paradigm to free mobile devices(MDs)from increasingly dense computing workloads in 6G networks.The quality of computing experience can be greatly improved by offloading computing...Mobile edge computing(MEC)emerges as a paradigm to free mobile devices(MDs)from increasingly dense computing workloads in 6G networks.The quality of computing experience can be greatly improved by offloading computing tasks from MDs to MEC servers.Renewable energy harvested by energy harvesting equipments(EHQs)is considered as a promising power supply for users to process and offload tasks.In this paper,we apply the uniform mobility model of MDs to derive a more realistic wireless channel model in a multi-user MEC system with batteries as EHQs to harvest and storage energy.We investigate an optimization problem of the weighted sum of delay cost and energy cost of MDs in the MEC system.We propose an effective joint partial computation offloading and resource allocation(CORA)algorithm which is based on deep reinforcement learning(DRL)to obtain the optimal scheduling without prior knowledge of task arrival,renewable energy arrival as well as channel condition.The simulation results verify the efficiency of the proposed algorithm,which undoubtedly minimizes the cost of MDs compared with other benchmarks.展开更多
Low earth orbit(LEO) satellite network is an important development trend for future mobile communication systems, which can truly realize the“ubiquitous connection” of the whole world. In this paper, we present a co...Low earth orbit(LEO) satellite network is an important development trend for future mobile communication systems, which can truly realize the“ubiquitous connection” of the whole world. In this paper, we present a cooperative computation offloading in the LEO satellite network with a three-tier computation architecture by leveraging the vertical cooperation among ground users, LEO satellites, and the cloud server, and the horizontal cooperation between LEO satellites. To improve the quality of service for ground users, we optimize the computation offloading decisions to minimize the total execution delay for ground users subject to the limited battery capacity of ground users and the computation capability of each LEO satellite. However, the formulated problem is a large-scale nonlinear integer programming problem as the number of ground users and LEO satellites increases, which is difficult to solve with general optimization algorithms. To address this challenging problem, we propose a distributed deep learning-based cooperative computation offloading(DDLCCO) algorithm, where multiple parallel deep neural networks(DNNs) are adopted to learn the computation offloading strategy dynamically. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can achieve near-optimal performance with low computational complexity compared with other computation offloading strategies.展开更多
Peer-to-peer computation offloading has been a promising approach that enables resourcelimited Internet of Things(IoT)devices to offload their computation-intensive tasks to idle peer devices in proximity.Different fr...Peer-to-peer computation offloading has been a promising approach that enables resourcelimited Internet of Things(IoT)devices to offload their computation-intensive tasks to idle peer devices in proximity.Different from dedicated servers,the spare computation resources offered by peer devices are random and intermittent,which affects the offloading performance.The mutual interference caused by multiple simultaneous offloading requestors that share the same wireless channel further complicates the offloading decisions.In this work,we investigate the opportunistic peer-to-peer task offloading problem by jointly considering the stochastic task arrivals,dynamic interuser interference,and opportunistic availability of peer devices.Each requestor makes decisions on both local computation frequency and offloading transmission power to minimize its own expected long-term cost on tasks completion,which takes into consideration its energy consumption,task delay,and task loss due to buffer overflow.The dynamic decision process among multiple requestors is formulated as a stochastic game.By constructing the post-decision states,a decentralized online offloading algorithm is proposed,where each requestor as an independent learning agent learns to approach the optimal strategies with its local observations.Simulation results under different system parameter configurations demonstrate the proposed online algorithm achieves a better performance compared with some existing algorithms,especially in the scenarios with large task arrival probability or small helper availability probability.展开更多
In this paper,we investigate video quality enhancement using computation offloading to the mobile cloud computing(MCC)environment.Our objective is to reduce the computational complexity required to covert a low-resolu...In this paper,we investigate video quality enhancement using computation offloading to the mobile cloud computing(MCC)environment.Our objective is to reduce the computational complexity required to covert a low-resolution video to high-resolution video while minimizing computation at the mobile client and additional communication costs.To do so,we propose an energy-efficient computation offloading framework for video streaming services in a MCC over the fifth generation(5G)cellular networks.In the proposed framework,the mobile client offloads the computational burden for the video enhancement to the cloud,which renders the side information needed to enhance video without requiring much computation by the client.The cloud detects edges from the upsampled ultra-high-resolution video(UHD)and then compresses and transmits them as side information with the original low-resolution video(e.g.,full HD).Finally,the mobile client decodes the received content and integrates the SI and original content,which produces a high-quality video.In our extensive simulation experiments,we observed that the amount of computation needed to construct a UHD video in the client is 50%-60% lower than that required to decode UHD video compressed by legacy video encoding algorithms.Moreover,the bandwidth required to transmit a full HD video and its side information is around 70% lower than that required for a normal UHD video.The subjective quality of the enhanced UHD is similar to that of the original UHD video even though the client pays lower communication costs with reduced computing power.展开更多
Applications with sensitive delay and sizeable data volumes,such as interactive gaming and augmented reality,have become popular in recent years.These applications pose a huge challenge for mobile users with limited r...Applications with sensitive delay and sizeable data volumes,such as interactive gaming and augmented reality,have become popular in recent years.These applications pose a huge challenge for mobile users with limited resources.Computation offloading is a mainstream technique to reduce execution delay and save energy for mobile users.However,computation offloading requires communication between mobile users and mobile edge computing(MEC) servers.Such a mechanism would difficultly meet users’ demand in some data-hungry and computation-intensive applications because the energy consumption and delay caused by transmissions are considerable expenses for users.Caching task data can effectively reduce the data transmissions when users offload their tasks to the MEC server.The limited caching space at the MEC server calls for judiciously decide which tasks should be cached.Motivated by this,we consider the joint optimization of computation offloading and task caching in a cellular network.In particular,it allows users to proactively cache or offload their tasks at the MEC server.The objective of this paper is to minimize the system cost,which is defined as the weighted sum of task execution delay and energy consumption for all users.Aiming at establishing optimal performance bound for the system design,we formulate an optimization problem by jointly optimizing the task caching,computation offloading,and resource allocation.The problem is a challenging mixed-integer non-linear programming problem and is NP-hard in general.To solve it efficiently,by using convex optimization,Karmarkar ’s algorithm and the proposed fast search algorithm,we obtain an optimal solution of the formulated problem with manageable computational complexity.Extensive simulation results show that in comparison to some representative benchmark methods,the proposed solution can effectively reduce the system cost.展开更多
Mobile-edge computing(MEC)is a promising technology for the fifth-generation(5G)and sixth-generation(6G)architectures,which provides resourceful computing capabilities for Internet of Things(IoT)devices,such as virtua...Mobile-edge computing(MEC)is a promising technology for the fifth-generation(5G)and sixth-generation(6G)architectures,which provides resourceful computing capabilities for Internet of Things(IoT)devices,such as virtual reality,mobile devices,and smart cities.In general,these IoT applications always bring higher energy consumption than traditional applications,which are usually energy-constrained.To provide persistent energy,many references have studied the offloading problem to save energy consumption.However,the dynamic environment dramatically increases the optimization difficulty of the offloading decision.In this paper,we aim to minimize the energy consumption of the entireMECsystemunder the latency constraint by fully considering the dynamic environment.UnderMarkov games,we propose amulti-agent deep reinforcement learning approach based on the bi-level actorcritic learning structure to jointly optimize the offloading decision and resource allocation,which can solve the combinatorial optimization problem using an asymmetric method and compute the Stackelberg equilibrium as a better convergence point than Nash equilibrium in terms of Pareto superiority.Our method can better adapt to a dynamic environment during the data transmission than the single-agent strategy and can effectively tackle the coordination problem in the multi-agent environment.The simulation results show that the proposed method could decrease the total computational overhead by 17.8%compared to the actor-critic-based method and reduce the total computational overhead by 31.3%,36.5%,and 44.7%compared with randomoffloading,all local execution,and all offloading execution,respectively.展开更多
In view of the randomness distribution of multiple users in the dynamic large-scale Internet of Things(IoT)scenario,comprehensively formulating available resources for fog nodes in the area and achieving computation s...In view of the randomness distribution of multiple users in the dynamic large-scale Internet of Things(IoT)scenario,comprehensively formulating available resources for fog nodes in the area and achieving computation services at low cost have become great challenges.As a result,this paper studies an efficient and intelligent computation offloading mechanism with resource allocation.Specifically,an optimization problem is formulated to minimize the total energy consumption of all tasks under the joint optimization of computation offloading decisions,bandwidth resources and transmission power.Meanwhile,a Twin Delayed Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient-based Intelligent Computation Offloading(TD3PG-ICO)algorithm is proposed to solve this optimization problem.By combining the concept of the actor critic algorithm,the proposed algorithm designs two independent critic networks that can avoid the subjective prediction of a single critic network and better guide the policy network to generate the global optimal computation offloading policy.Additionally,this algorithm introduces a continuous variable discretization operation to select the target offloading node with random probability.The available resources of the target node are dynamically allocated to improve the model decision-making effect.Finally,the simulation results show that this proposed algorithm has faster convergence speed and good robustness.It can always approach the greedy algorithm with respect to the lowest total energy consumption.Furthermore,compared with full local and Deep Q-learning Network(DQN)-based computation offloading schemes,the total energy consumption can be reduced by an average of 15.53%and 6.41%,respectively.展开更多
Edge computation offloading allows mobile end devices to execute compute-inten?sive tasks on edge servers. End devices can decide whether the tasks are offloaded to edge servers, cloud servers or executed locally acco...Edge computation offloading allows mobile end devices to execute compute-inten?sive tasks on edge servers. End devices can decide whether the tasks are offloaded to edge servers, cloud servers or executed locally according to current network condition and devic?es'profiles in an online manner. In this paper, we propose an edge computation offloading framework based on deep imitation learning (DIL) and knowledge distillation (KD), which assists end devices to quickly make fine-grained decisions to optimize the delay of computa?tion tasks online. We formalize a computation offloading problem into a multi-label classifi?cation problem. Training samples for our DIL model are generated in an offline manner. Af?ter the model is trained, we leverage KD to obtain a lightweight DIL model, by which we fur?ther reduce the model's inference delay. Numerical experiment shows that the offloading de?cisions made by our model not only outperform those made by other related policies in laten?cy metric, but also have the shortest inference delay among all policies.展开更多
As the Internet of Things(IoT)and mobile devices have rapidly proliferated,their computationally intensive applications have developed into complex,concurrent IoT-based workflows involving multiple interdependent task...As the Internet of Things(IoT)and mobile devices have rapidly proliferated,their computationally intensive applications have developed into complex,concurrent IoT-based workflows involving multiple interdependent tasks.By exploiting its low latency and high bandwidth,mobile edge computing(MEC)has emerged to achieve the high-performance computation offloading of these applications to satisfy the quality-of-service requirements of workflows and devices.In this study,we propose an offloading strategy for IoT-based workflows in a high-performance MEC environment.The proposed task-based offloading strategy consists of an optimization problem that includes task dependency,communication costs,workflow constraints,device energy consumption,and the heterogeneous characteristics of the edge environment.In addition,the optimal placement of workflow tasks is optimized using a discrete teaching learning-based optimization(DTLBO)metaheuristic.Extensive experimental evaluations demonstrate that the proposed offloading strategy is effective at minimizing the energy consumption of mobile devices and reducing the execution times of workflows compared to offloading strategies using different metaheuristics,including particle swarm optimization and ant colony optimization.展开更多
The utilization of mobile edge computing(MEC)for unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)communication presents a viable solution for achieving high reliability and low latency communication.This study explores the potential of e...The utilization of mobile edge computing(MEC)for unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)communication presents a viable solution for achieving high reliability and low latency communication.This study explores the potential of employing intelligent reflective surfaces(IRS)andUAVs as relay nodes to efficiently offload user computing tasks to theMEC server system model.Specifically,the user node accesses the primary user spectrum,while adhering to the constraint of satisfying the primary user peak interference power.Furthermore,the UAV acquires energy without interrupting the primary user’s regular communication by employing two energy harvesting schemes,namely time switching(TS)and power splitting(PS).The selection of the optimal UAV is based on the maximization of the instantaneous signal-to-noise ratio.Subsequently,the analytical expression for the outage probability of the system in Rayleigh channels is derived and analyzed.The study investigates the impact of various system parameters,including the number of UAVs,peak interference power,TS,and PS factors,on the system’s outage performance through simulation.The proposed system is also compared to two conventional benchmark schemes:the optimal UAV link transmission and the IRS link transmission.The simulation results validate the theoretical derivation and demonstrate the superiority of the proposed scheme over the benchmark schemes.展开更多
Mobile edge computing has shown its potential in serving emerging latency-sensitive mobile applications in ultra-dense 5G networks via offloading computation workloads from the remote cloud data center to the nearby n...Mobile edge computing has shown its potential in serving emerging latency-sensitive mobile applications in ultra-dense 5G networks via offloading computation workloads from the remote cloud data center to the nearby network edge.However,current computation offloading studies in the heterogeneous edge environment face multifaceted challenges:Dependencies among computational tasks,resource competition among multiple users,and diverse long-term objectives.Mobile applications typically consist of several functionalities,and one huge category of the applications can be viewed as a series of sequential tasks.In this study,we first proposed a novel multiuser computation offloading framework for long-term sequential tasks.Then,we presented a comprehensive analysis of the task offloading process in the framework and formally defined the multiuser sequential task offloading problem.Moreover,we decoupled the long-term offloading problem into multiple single time slot offloading problems and proposed a novel adaptive method to solve them.We further showed the substantial performance advantage of our proposed method on the basis of extensive experiments.展开更多
Mobile Edge Computing(MEC)is one of the most promising techniques for next-generation wireless communication systems.In this paper,we study the problem of dynamic caching,computation offloading,and resource allocation...Mobile Edge Computing(MEC)is one of the most promising techniques for next-generation wireless communication systems.In this paper,we study the problem of dynamic caching,computation offloading,and resource allocation in cache-assisted multi-user MEC systems with stochastic task arrivals.There are multiple computationally intensive tasks in the system,and each Mobile User(MU)needs to execute a task either locally or remotely in one or more MEC servers by offloading the task data.Popular tasks can be cached in MEC servers to avoid duplicates in offloading.The cached contents can be either obtained through user offloading,fetched from a remote cloud,or fetched from another MEC server.The objective is to minimize the long-term average of a cost function,which is defined as a weighted sum of energy consumption,delay,and cache contents’fetching costs.The weighting coefficients associated with the different metrics in the objective function can be adjusted to balance the tradeoff among them.The optimum design is performed with respect to four decision parameters:whether to cache a given task,whether to offload a given uncached task,how much transmission power should be used during offloading,and how much MEC resources to be allocated for executing a task.We propose to solve the problems by developing a dynamic scheduling policy based on Deep Reinforcement Learning(DRL)with the Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient(DDPG)method.A new decentralized DDPG algorithm is developed to obtain the optimum designs for multi-cell MEC systems by leveraging on the cooperations among neighboring MEC servers.Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm outperforms other existing strategies,such as Deep Q-Network(DQN).展开更多
基金supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China No.62231012Natural Science Foundation for Outstanding Young Scholars of Heilongjiang Province under Grant YQ2020F001Heilongjiang Province Postdoctoral General Foundation under Grant AUGA4110004923.
文摘Low earth orbit(LEO)satellites with wide coverage can carry the mobile edge computing(MEC)servers with powerful computing capabilities to form the LEO satellite edge computing system,providing computing services for the global ground users.In this paper,the computation offloading problem and resource allocation problem are formulated as a mixed integer nonlinear program(MINLP)problem.This paper proposes a computation offloading algorithm based on deep deterministic policy gradient(DDPG)to obtain the user offloading decisions and user uplink transmission power.This paper uses the convex optimization algorithm based on Lagrange multiplier method to obtain the optimal MEC server resource allocation scheme.In addition,the expression of suboptimal user local CPU cycles is derived by relaxation method.Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can achieve excellent convergence effect,and the proposed algorithm significantly reduces the system utility values at considerable time cost compared with other algorithms.
基金supported in part by Sub Project of National Key Research and Development plan in 2020 NO.2020YFC1511704Beijing Information Science and Technology University NO.2020KYNH212,NO.2021CGZH302+1 种基金Beijing Science and Technology Project(Grant No.Z211100004421009)in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant No.62301058).
文摘Low Earth orbit(LEO)satellite networks have the advantages of low transmission delay and low deployment cost,playing an important role in providing reliable services to ground users.This paper studies an efficient inter-satellite cooperative computation offloading(ICCO)algorithm for LEO satellite networks.Specifically,an ICCO system model is constructed,which considers using neighboring satellites in the LEO satellite networks to collaboratively process tasks generated by ground user terminals,effectively improving resource utilization efficiency.Additionally,the optimization objective of minimizing the system task computation offloading delay and energy consumption is established,which is decoupled into two sub-problems.In terms of computational resource allocation,the convexity of the problem is proved through theoretical derivation,and the Lagrange multiplier method is used to obtain the optimal solution of computational resources.To deal with the task offloading decision,a dynamic sticky binary particle swarm optimization algorithm is designed to obtain the offloading decision by iteration.Simulation results show that the ICCO algorithm can effectively reduce the delay and energy consumption.
基金supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 61901128,62273109the Natural Science Foundation of the Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions of China(21KJB510032).
文摘The growing development of the Internet of Things(IoT)is accelerating the emergence and growth of new IoT services and applications,which will result in massive amounts of data being generated,transmitted and pro-cessed in wireless communication networks.Mobile Edge Computing(MEC)is a desired paradigm to timely process the data from IoT for value maximization.In MEC,a number of computing-capable devices are deployed at the network edge near data sources to support edge computing,such that the long network transmission delay in cloud computing paradigm could be avoided.Since an edge device might not always have sufficient resources to process the massive amount of data,computation offloading is significantly important considering the coop-eration among edge devices.However,the dynamic traffic characteristics and heterogeneous computing capa-bilities of edge devices challenge the offloading.In addition,different scheduling schemes might provide different computation delays to the offloaded tasks.Thus,offloading in mobile nodes and scheduling in the MEC server are coupled to determine service delay.This paper seeks to guarantee low delay for computation intensive applica-tions by jointly optimizing the offloading and scheduling in such an MEC system.We propose a Delay-Greedy Computation Offloading(DGCO)algorithm to make offloading decisions for new tasks in distributed computing-enabled mobile devices.A Reinforcement Learning-based Parallel Scheduling(RLPS)algorithm is further designed to schedule offloaded tasks in the multi-core MEC server.With an offloading delay broadcast mechanism,the DGCO and RLPS cooperate to achieve the goal of delay-guarantee-ratio maximization.Finally,the simulation results show that our proposal can bound the end-to-end delay of various tasks.Even under slightly heavy task load,the delay-guarantee-ratio given by DGCO-RLPS can still approximate 95%,while that given by benchmarked algorithms is reduced to intolerable value.The simulation results are demonstrated the effective-ness of DGCO-RLPS for delay guarantee in MEC.
基金This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China(2021YFB2900600)the National Natural Science Foundation of China(61971041+2 种基金62001027)the Beijing Natural Science Foundation(M22001)the Technological Innovation Program of Beijing Institute of Technology(2022CX01027).
文摘By deploying the ubiquitous and reliable coverage of low Earth orbit(LEO)satellite networks using optical inter satel-lite link(OISL),computation offloading services can be provided for any users without proximal servers,while the resource limita-tion of both computation and storage on satellites is the impor-tant factor affecting the maximum task completion time.In this paper,we study a delay-optimal multi-satellite collaborative computation offloading scheme that allows satellites to actively migrate tasks among themselves by employing the high-speed OISLs,such that tasks with long queuing delay will be served as quickly as possible by utilizing idle computation resources in the neighborhood.To satisfy the delay requirement of delay-sensi-tive task,we first propose a deadline-aware task scheduling scheme in which a priority model is constructed to sort the order of tasks being served based on its deadline,and then a delay-optimal collaborative offloading scheme is derived such that the tasks which cannot be completed locally can be migrated to other idle satellites.Simulation results demonstrate the effective-ness of our multi-satellite collaborative computation offloading strategy in reducing task complement time and improving resource utilization of the LEO satellite network.
基金supported in part by the National Key R&D Program of China under Grant 2018YFC0831502.
文摘Multi-access Edge Computing(MEC)is one of the key technologies of the future 5G network.By deploying edge computing centers at the edge of wireless access network,the computation tasks can be offloaded to edge servers rather than the remote cloud server to meet the requirements of 5G low-latency and high-reliability application scenarios.Meanwhile,with the development of IOV(Internet of Vehicles)technology,various delay-sensitive and compute-intensive in-vehicle applications continue to appear.Compared with traditional Internet business,these computation tasks have higher processing priority and lower delay requirements.In this paper,we design a 5G-based vehicle-aware Multi-access Edge Computing network(VAMECN)and propose a joint optimization problem of minimizing total system cost.In view of the problem,a deep reinforcement learningbased joint computation offloading and task migration optimization(JCOTM)algorithm is proposed,considering the influences of multiple factors such as concurrent multiple computation tasks,system computing resources distribution,and network communication bandwidth.And,the mixed integer nonlinear programming problem is described as a Markov Decision Process.Experiments show that our proposed algorithm can effectively reduce task processing delay and equipment energy consumption,optimize computing offloading and resource allocation schemes,and improve system resource utilization,compared with other computing offloading policies.
基金This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(61571059 and 61871058).
文摘To reduce the transmission latency and mitigate the backhaul burden of the centralized cloud-based network services,the mobile edge computing(MEC)has been drawing increased attention from both industry and academia recently.This paper focuses on mobile users’computation offloading problem in wireless cellular networks with mobile edge computing for the purpose of optimizing the computation offloading decision making policy.Since wireless network states and computing requests have stochastic properties and the environment’s dynamics are unknown,we use the modelfree reinforcement learning(RL)framework to formulate and tackle the computation offloading problem.Each mobile user learns through interactions with the environment and the estimate of its performance in the form of value function,then it chooses the overhead-aware optimal computation offloading action(local computing or edge computing)based on its state.The state spaces are high-dimensional in our work and value function is unrealistic to estimate.Consequently,we use deep reinforcement learning algorithm,which combines RL method Q-learning with the deep neural network(DNN)to approximate the value functions for complicated control applications,and the optimal policy will be obtained when the value function reaches convergence.Simulation results showed that the effectiveness of the proposed method in comparison with baseline methods in terms of total overheads of all mobile users.
基金supported by National Key R&D Program of China under Grant.No.2018YFB1800805National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No.61772345,61902257,61972261Shenzhen Science and Technology Program under Grant No.RCYX20200714114645048,No.JCYJ20190808142207420,No.GJHZ20190822095416463.
文摘Handling the massive amount of data generated by Smart Mobile Devices(SMDs)is a challenging computational problem.Edge Computing is an emerging computation paradigm that is employed to conquer this problem.It can bring computation power closer to the end devices to reduce their computation latency and energy consumption.Therefore,this paradigm increases the computational ability of SMDs by collaboration with edge servers.This is achieved by computation offloading from the mobile devices to the edge nodes or servers.However,not all applications benefit from computation offloading,which is only suitable for certain types of tasks.Task properties,SMD capability,wireless channel state,and other factors must be counted when making computation offloading decisions.Hence,optimization methods are important tools in scheduling computation offloading tasks in Edge Computing networks.In this paper,we review six types of optimization methods-they are Lyapunov optimization,convex optimization,heuristic techniques,game theory,machine learning,and others.For each type,we focus on the objective functions,application areas,types of offloading methods,evaluation methods,as well as the time complexity of the proposed algorithms.We discuss a few research problems that are still open.Our purpose for this review is to provide a concise summary that can help new researchers get started with their computation offloading researches for Edge Computing networks.
基金supported in part by National Natural Science Foundation of China(No. 61372070)Natural Science Basic Research Plan in Shaanxi Province of China(No. 2015JM6324)+3 种基金Ningbo Natural Science Foundation(2015A610117)Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan Science & Technology Cooperation Program of China(No. 2015DFT10160)EU FP7 Project MONICA (No.PIRSES-GA-2011-295222)the 111 Project(No.B08038)
文摘The cloud radio access network(C-RAN) and the fog computing have been recently proposed to tackle the dramatically increasing traffic demands and to provide better quality of service(QoS) to user equipment(UE).Considering the better computation capability of the cloud RAN(10 times larger than that of the fog RAN) and the lower transmission delay of the fog computing,we propose a joint resource allocation and coordinated computation offloading algorithm for the fog RAN(F-RAN),which takes the advantage of C-RAN and fog computing.Specifically,the F-RAN splits a computation task into the fog computing part and the cloud computing part.Based on the constraints of maximum transmission delay tolerance,fronthaul and backhaul capacity limits,we minimize the energy cost and obtain optimal computational resource allocation for multiple UE,transmission power allocation of each UE and the event splitting factor.Numerical results have been proposed with the comparison of existing methods.
基金supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 62072096in part by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities under Grant 2232020A12+3 种基金in part by the International S&T Cooperation Program of Shanghai Science and Technology Commission under Grant 20220713000in part by “Shuguang Program” of Shanghai Education Development Foundation and Shanghai Municipal Education Commissionin part by the Young Top-notch Talent Program in Shanghaiin part by “the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities and Graduate Student Innovation Fund of Donghua University” under Grant CUSF-DH-D-2021058。
文摘Mobile edge computing(MEC)emerges as a paradigm to free mobile devices(MDs)from increasingly dense computing workloads in 6G networks.The quality of computing experience can be greatly improved by offloading computing tasks from MDs to MEC servers.Renewable energy harvested by energy harvesting equipments(EHQs)is considered as a promising power supply for users to process and offload tasks.In this paper,we apply the uniform mobility model of MDs to derive a more realistic wireless channel model in a multi-user MEC system with batteries as EHQs to harvest and storage energy.We investigate an optimization problem of the weighted sum of delay cost and energy cost of MDs in the MEC system.We propose an effective joint partial computation offloading and resource allocation(CORA)algorithm which is based on deep reinforcement learning(DRL)to obtain the optimal scheduling without prior knowledge of task arrival,renewable energy arrival as well as channel condition.The simulation results verify the efficiency of the proposed algorithm,which undoubtedly minimizes the cost of MDs compared with other benchmarks.
基金partially supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (2020YFB1806900)by Ericsson, by the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (No. BK20200822)+1 种基金by the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions of China (No. 20KJB510036)by the open research fund of Key Lab of Broadband Wireless Communication and Sensor Network Technology (Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications),Ministry of Education (No. JZNY202103)。
文摘Low earth orbit(LEO) satellite network is an important development trend for future mobile communication systems, which can truly realize the“ubiquitous connection” of the whole world. In this paper, we present a cooperative computation offloading in the LEO satellite network with a three-tier computation architecture by leveraging the vertical cooperation among ground users, LEO satellites, and the cloud server, and the horizontal cooperation between LEO satellites. To improve the quality of service for ground users, we optimize the computation offloading decisions to minimize the total execution delay for ground users subject to the limited battery capacity of ground users and the computation capability of each LEO satellite. However, the formulated problem is a large-scale nonlinear integer programming problem as the number of ground users and LEO satellites increases, which is difficult to solve with general optimization algorithms. To address this challenging problem, we propose a distributed deep learning-based cooperative computation offloading(DDLCCO) algorithm, where multiple parallel deep neural networks(DNNs) are adopted to learn the computation offloading strategy dynamically. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can achieve near-optimal performance with low computational complexity compared with other computation offloading strategies.
基金supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 62101601)
文摘Peer-to-peer computation offloading has been a promising approach that enables resourcelimited Internet of Things(IoT)devices to offload their computation-intensive tasks to idle peer devices in proximity.Different from dedicated servers,the spare computation resources offered by peer devices are random and intermittent,which affects the offloading performance.The mutual interference caused by multiple simultaneous offloading requestors that share the same wireless channel further complicates the offloading decisions.In this work,we investigate the opportunistic peer-to-peer task offloading problem by jointly considering the stochastic task arrivals,dynamic interuser interference,and opportunistic availability of peer devices.Each requestor makes decisions on both local computation frequency and offloading transmission power to minimize its own expected long-term cost on tasks completion,which takes into consideration its energy consumption,task delay,and task loss due to buffer overflow.The dynamic decision process among multiple requestors is formulated as a stochastic game.By constructing the post-decision states,a decentralized online offloading algorithm is proposed,where each requestor as an independent learning agent learns to approach the optimal strategies with its local observations.Simulation results under different system parameter configurations demonstrate the proposed online algorithm achieves a better performance compared with some existing algorithms,especially in the scenarios with large task arrival probability or small helper availability probability.
文摘In this paper,we investigate video quality enhancement using computation offloading to the mobile cloud computing(MCC)environment.Our objective is to reduce the computational complexity required to covert a low-resolution video to high-resolution video while minimizing computation at the mobile client and additional communication costs.To do so,we propose an energy-efficient computation offloading framework for video streaming services in a MCC over the fifth generation(5G)cellular networks.In the proposed framework,the mobile client offloads the computational burden for the video enhancement to the cloud,which renders the side information needed to enhance video without requiring much computation by the client.The cloud detects edges from the upsampled ultra-high-resolution video(UHD)and then compresses and transmits them as side information with the original low-resolution video(e.g.,full HD).Finally,the mobile client decodes the received content and integrates the SI and original content,which produces a high-quality video.In our extensive simulation experiments,we observed that the amount of computation needed to construct a UHD video in the client is 50%-60% lower than that required to decode UHD video compressed by legacy video encoding algorithms.Moreover,the bandwidth required to transmit a full HD video and its side information is around 70% lower than that required for a normal UHD video.The subjective quality of the enhanced UHD is similar to that of the original UHD video even though the client pays lower communication costs with reduced computing power.
基金supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 61971077,Grant 61901066in part by the Project Supported by Chongqing Key Laboratory of Mobile Communications Technology under Grant cquptmct-201902+1 种基金in part by the Chongqing Science and Technology Commission under Grant cstc2019jcyjmsxmX0575in part by the Program for Innovation Team Building at colleges and universities in Chongqing,China under Grant CXTDX201601006
文摘Applications with sensitive delay and sizeable data volumes,such as interactive gaming and augmented reality,have become popular in recent years.These applications pose a huge challenge for mobile users with limited resources.Computation offloading is a mainstream technique to reduce execution delay and save energy for mobile users.However,computation offloading requires communication between mobile users and mobile edge computing(MEC) servers.Such a mechanism would difficultly meet users’ demand in some data-hungry and computation-intensive applications because the energy consumption and delay caused by transmissions are considerable expenses for users.Caching task data can effectively reduce the data transmissions when users offload their tasks to the MEC server.The limited caching space at the MEC server calls for judiciously decide which tasks should be cached.Motivated by this,we consider the joint optimization of computation offloading and task caching in a cellular network.In particular,it allows users to proactively cache or offload their tasks at the MEC server.The objective of this paper is to minimize the system cost,which is defined as the weighted sum of task execution delay and energy consumption for all users.Aiming at establishing optimal performance bound for the system design,we formulate an optimization problem by jointly optimizing the task caching,computation offloading,and resource allocation.The problem is a challenging mixed-integer non-linear programming problem and is NP-hard in general.To solve it efficiently,by using convex optimization,Karmarkar ’s algorithm and the proposed fast search algorithm,we obtain an optimal solution of the formulated problem with manageable computational complexity.Extensive simulation results show that in comparison to some representative benchmark methods,the proposed solution can effectively reduce the system cost.
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(62162050)the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities(No.N2217002)the Natural Science Foundation of Liaoning ProvincialDepartment of Science and Technology(No.2022-KF-11-04).
文摘Mobile-edge computing(MEC)is a promising technology for the fifth-generation(5G)and sixth-generation(6G)architectures,which provides resourceful computing capabilities for Internet of Things(IoT)devices,such as virtual reality,mobile devices,and smart cities.In general,these IoT applications always bring higher energy consumption than traditional applications,which are usually energy-constrained.To provide persistent energy,many references have studied the offloading problem to save energy consumption.However,the dynamic environment dramatically increases the optimization difficulty of the offloading decision.In this paper,we aim to minimize the energy consumption of the entireMECsystemunder the latency constraint by fully considering the dynamic environment.UnderMarkov games,we propose amulti-agent deep reinforcement learning approach based on the bi-level actorcritic learning structure to jointly optimize the offloading decision and resource allocation,which can solve the combinatorial optimization problem using an asymmetric method and compute the Stackelberg equilibrium as a better convergence point than Nash equilibrium in terms of Pareto superiority.Our method can better adapt to a dynamic environment during the data transmission than the single-agent strategy and can effectively tackle the coordination problem in the multi-agent environment.The simulation results show that the proposed method could decrease the total computational overhead by 17.8%compared to the actor-critic-based method and reduce the total computational overhead by 31.3%,36.5%,and 44.7%compared with randomoffloading,all local execution,and all offloading execution,respectively.
基金partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(No.61971235)the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation(No.2018M630590)+3 种基金the Jiangsu Planned Projects for Postdoctoral Research Funds(No.2021K501C)the 333 High-level Talents Training Project of Jiangsu Provincethe 1311 Talents Plan of NJUPTthe Postgraduate Research&Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province(No.KYCX20_0851).
文摘In view of the randomness distribution of multiple users in the dynamic large-scale Internet of Things(IoT)scenario,comprehensively formulating available resources for fog nodes in the area and achieving computation services at low cost have become great challenges.As a result,this paper studies an efficient and intelligent computation offloading mechanism with resource allocation.Specifically,an optimization problem is formulated to minimize the total energy consumption of all tasks under the joint optimization of computation offloading decisions,bandwidth resources and transmission power.Meanwhile,a Twin Delayed Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient-based Intelligent Computation Offloading(TD3PG-ICO)algorithm is proposed to solve this optimization problem.By combining the concept of the actor critic algorithm,the proposed algorithm designs two independent critic networks that can avoid the subjective prediction of a single critic network and better guide the policy network to generate the global optimal computation offloading policy.Additionally,this algorithm introduces a continuous variable discretization operation to select the target offloading node with random probability.The available resources of the target node are dynamically allocated to improve the model decision-making effect.Finally,the simulation results show that this proposed algorithm has faster convergence speed and good robustness.It can always approach the greedy algorithm with respect to the lowest total energy consumption.Furthermore,compared with full local and Deep Q-learning Network(DQN)-based computation offloading schemes,the total energy consumption can be reduced by an average of 15.53%and 6.41%,respectively.
基金This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation of China under Grant No.61972432the Program for Guangdong Introduc⁃ing Innovative and Entrepreneurial Teams under Grant No.2017ZT07X355.
文摘Edge computation offloading allows mobile end devices to execute compute-inten?sive tasks on edge servers. End devices can decide whether the tasks are offloaded to edge servers, cloud servers or executed locally according to current network condition and devic?es'profiles in an online manner. In this paper, we propose an edge computation offloading framework based on deep imitation learning (DIL) and knowledge distillation (KD), which assists end devices to quickly make fine-grained decisions to optimize the delay of computa?tion tasks online. We formalize a computation offloading problem into a multi-label classifi?cation problem. Training samples for our DIL model are generated in an offline manner. Af?ter the model is trained, we leverage KD to obtain a lightweight DIL model, by which we fur?ther reduce the model's inference delay. Numerical experiment shows that the offloading de?cisions made by our model not only outperform those made by other related policies in laten?cy metric, but also have the shortest inference delay among all policies.
文摘As the Internet of Things(IoT)and mobile devices have rapidly proliferated,their computationally intensive applications have developed into complex,concurrent IoT-based workflows involving multiple interdependent tasks.By exploiting its low latency and high bandwidth,mobile edge computing(MEC)has emerged to achieve the high-performance computation offloading of these applications to satisfy the quality-of-service requirements of workflows and devices.In this study,we propose an offloading strategy for IoT-based workflows in a high-performance MEC environment.The proposed task-based offloading strategy consists of an optimization problem that includes task dependency,communication costs,workflow constraints,device energy consumption,and the heterogeneous characteristics of the edge environment.In addition,the optimal placement of workflow tasks is optimized using a discrete teaching learning-based optimization(DTLBO)metaheuristic.Extensive experimental evaluations demonstrate that the proposed offloading strategy is effective at minimizing the energy consumption of mobile devices and reducing the execution times of workflows compared to offloading strategies using different metaheuristics,including particle swarm optimization and ant colony optimization.
基金the National Natural Science Foundation of China(62271192)Henan Provincial Scientists Studio(GZS2022015)+10 种基金Central Plains Talents Plan(ZYYCYU202012173)NationalKeyR&DProgramofChina(2020YFB2008400)the Program ofCEMEE(2022Z00202B)LAGEO of Chinese Academy of Sciences(LAGEO-2019-2)Program for Science&Technology Innovation Talents in the University of Henan Province(20HASTIT022)Natural Science Foundation of Henan under Grant 202300410126Program for Innovative Research Team in University of Henan Province(21IRTSTHN015)Equipment Pre-Research Joint Research Program of Ministry of Education(8091B032129)Training Program for Young Scholar of Henan Province for Colleges and Universities(2020GGJS172)Program for Science&Technology Innovation Talents in Universities of Henan Province under Grand(22HASTIT020)Henan Province Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars(222300420006).
文摘The utilization of mobile edge computing(MEC)for unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)communication presents a viable solution for achieving high reliability and low latency communication.This study explores the potential of employing intelligent reflective surfaces(IRS)andUAVs as relay nodes to efficiently offload user computing tasks to theMEC server system model.Specifically,the user node accesses the primary user spectrum,while adhering to the constraint of satisfying the primary user peak interference power.Furthermore,the UAV acquires energy without interrupting the primary user’s regular communication by employing two energy harvesting schemes,namely time switching(TS)and power splitting(PS).The selection of the optimal UAV is based on the maximization of the instantaneous signal-to-noise ratio.Subsequently,the analytical expression for the outage probability of the system in Rayleigh channels is derived and analyzed.The study investigates the impact of various system parameters,including the number of UAVs,peak interference power,TS,and PS factors,on the system’s outage performance through simulation.The proposed system is also compared to two conventional benchmark schemes:the optimal UAV link transmission and the IRS link transmission.The simulation results validate the theoretical derivation and demonstrate the superiority of the proposed scheme over the benchmark schemes.
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos.61972272,62172291,62072321,and U1905211)the Natural Science Foundation of the Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions of China (No.21KJA520008)+2 种基金the Open Project Program of the State Key Laboratory of Mathematical Engineering and Advanced Computing (No.2019A04)the Postgraduate Research&Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province (No.SJCX211344)the Provincial Key Laboratory for Computer Information Processing Technology (No.KJS1740).
文摘Mobile edge computing has shown its potential in serving emerging latency-sensitive mobile applications in ultra-dense 5G networks via offloading computation workloads from the remote cloud data center to the nearby network edge.However,current computation offloading studies in the heterogeneous edge environment face multifaceted challenges:Dependencies among computational tasks,resource competition among multiple users,and diverse long-term objectives.Mobile applications typically consist of several functionalities,and one huge category of the applications can be viewed as a series of sequential tasks.In this study,we first proposed a novel multiuser computation offloading framework for long-term sequential tasks.Then,we presented a comprehensive analysis of the task offloading process in the framework and formally defined the multiuser sequential task offloading problem.Moreover,we decoupled the long-term offloading problem into multiple single time slot offloading problems and proposed a novel adaptive method to solve them.We further showed the substantial performance advantage of our proposed method on the basis of extensive experiments.
文摘Mobile Edge Computing(MEC)is one of the most promising techniques for next-generation wireless communication systems.In this paper,we study the problem of dynamic caching,computation offloading,and resource allocation in cache-assisted multi-user MEC systems with stochastic task arrivals.There are multiple computationally intensive tasks in the system,and each Mobile User(MU)needs to execute a task either locally or remotely in one or more MEC servers by offloading the task data.Popular tasks can be cached in MEC servers to avoid duplicates in offloading.The cached contents can be either obtained through user offloading,fetched from a remote cloud,or fetched from another MEC server.The objective is to minimize the long-term average of a cost function,which is defined as a weighted sum of energy consumption,delay,and cache contents’fetching costs.The weighting coefficients associated with the different metrics in the objective function can be adjusted to balance the tradeoff among them.The optimum design is performed with respect to four decision parameters:whether to cache a given task,whether to offload a given uncached task,how much transmission power should be used during offloading,and how much MEC resources to be allocated for executing a task.We propose to solve the problems by developing a dynamic scheduling policy based on Deep Reinforcement Learning(DRL)with the Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient(DDPG)method.A new decentralized DDPG algorithm is developed to obtain the optimum designs for multi-cell MEC systems by leveraging on the cooperations among neighboring MEC servers.Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm outperforms other existing strategies,such as Deep Q-Network(DQN).
