Computation Offloading and User Association for Blockchain-Enabled Heterogeneous Cellular Networks

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate a novel blockchain-enabled heterogeneous cellular network (HetNet). In this network, mobile users associate with the serving base stations (BSs) and offload their computation-intensive proof-of-work mining tasks to the mobile edge computing server of the macro-cell BS. We initialize the user association strategy by using the traditional nearest BS association algorithm in the blockchain-enabled HetNet. Then, we formulate the computation offloading problem and design an alternating iterative algorithm to attain the computing demand strategies for all users. Based on obtained computing demand strategies, we propose a modified user association algorithm in order to improve the data congestion of BSs. Analytical results show that the blockchain-enabled HetNet can serve more users, and the proposed algorithms can effectively obtain strategies of user association and computation offloading. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed alternating iterative algorithm for computation offloading has fast convergence and good stability, and the proposed modified user association algorithm can avoid data congestion better than the traditional nearest BS association algorithm.