Mobile Network-Aware Middleware Framework for Cloud Offloading: Using Reinforcement Learning to Make Reward-Based Decisions in Smartphone Applications

Abstract

Offloading mobile computations is an innovative technique to reduce energy consumption in mobile devices and minimize application response time. In this article, we propose a middleware framework that uses reinforcement learning (RL) to make reward-based offloading decisions. Our framework allows a smartphone to consider suitable contextual information to determine when it makes sense to offload and select between available networks when offloading. We tested our framework in simulated and real environments, across various apps, to demonstrate how energy consumption can be minimized in mobile devices capable of supporting offloading to the cloud.