Collaborative computation offloading for scheduling emergency tasks in SDN-based mobile edge computing networks

Abstract

Due to the growing demand for time-intensive tasks, several tasks coexist, some of which last for a long time or only occur once in a while, such as emergencies. Emergencies such as natural disasters, accidents or medical emergencies require immediate attention and often demand real-time execution. Such tasks are the most difficult to plan for and foresee. Planning, resource allocation, and clear communication between all involved parties and network layers are crucial for scheduling emergency tasks. In the extensive literature, when an emergency task triggers, it will be handled like any other regular task. If the deadline is missed, a catastrophe will ensue. They ignored the impact of insufficient mobile edge computing (MEC) capacity and network congestion, which might result in execution delays. Collaborative offloading, which involves distributing computation tasks across multiple servers, shows promise in enhancing MEC network performance, particularly in emergency scenarios. In this context, efficient task scheduling plays a vital role in minimizing the total execution time of regular tasks while meeting the deadlines of emergency tasks. Our proposed scheme utilizes a collaborative offloading approach to schedule emergency tasks in MEC networks, leveraging the computing capacity of edge-deployed MEC servers. By utilizing the software-defined networking (SDN)’s global view of the network, task requests are collected and allocated to suitable MEC servers capable of meeting the demands. To address key challenges, our scheme propose four scheduling algorithms to address the following issues: (i) ensuring tasks are assigned to the nearest MEC server with sufficient computational resources, (ii) controlling a threshold to prevent network congestion, (iii) selecting an optimal collaborative MEC server for executing overloaded tasks based on collaborative offloading decisions, and (iv) allocating resources for emergency tasks when triggered to meet urgent deadlines by stealing resources from regular tasks without compromising their deadlines. Extensive simulations were conducted to assess the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. The results clearly illustrate its enhanced performance in terms of the total execution time of regular tasks and the ability to meet deadlines for emergency tasks.