Resource Allocation on Blockchain Enabled Mobile Edge Computing System

Abstract

Currently, the concept of Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) has been applied as a solution against the plethora of demands for high-quality computing services. It comprises several essential processes, such as resource allocation, data transmission, and task processing. Furthermore, researchers applied blockchain technology, aiming to enhance the robustness of the MEC system. At present, resource allocation in the MEC system is a very hot field, but there are still some problems in the resource allocation process under the traditional MEC architecture, such as privacy disclosure and so on. Moreover, the resource allocation problem in a blockchain-enabled MEC system will be more complicated, while the mining process may have an impact on resource allocation policy. To address this issue, this paper investigates the resource allocation problem with blockchain-based MEC system architecture. A brand new consensus mechanism: proof of learning (PoL), is applied to the system, which does not waste the computing resources of edge computing servers. Based on this, we modeled the system mathematically, focusing on server processing latency, mining latency, rewards under the new consensus, and total cost. The asynchronous advantage Actor-Critic (A3C) algorithm is used to optimize resource allocation policy. To better capture the long-time trend of the system, the temporal convolutional network (TCN) is implemented to represent the policy function and state-value function in the reinforcement learning model. The results show that the A3C algorithm based on TCN not only converges faster but also is more stable.