Survey on Multiple Methods for Task Offloading in Mobile Cloud-Edge Environment

Abstract

Mobile edge computing (MEC) is an emerging technology that extends cloud computing to the edge of the network. It offloads computing intensive tasks to the edge server to solve the problem of insufficient computing power and resource of the terminal device, meets the low energy consumption and low latency requirements of the mobile user for application task computing, and greatly releases the pressure of the cloud center. Cloud-edge integration architecture has become a trend. How to perform optimal offload scheduling for terminal tasks has always been one of the key issue in the field of MEC research. This paper reviews the research directions and achievements of task offloading technology in today’s cloud-edge environment. First, the development status of MEC environment and task offloading technology are introduced, and the concepts and applications of classic schemes such as heuristic algorithm, metaheuristic algorithm, and reinforcement learning are elaborated. Based on the mainstream solutions in the research literature, two types of task offloading solutions are summarized: traditional task offloading solutions based on algorithm optimization and interactive task offloading solutions based on reinforcement learning. Second, the research literature on the two mainstream directions mentioned above is summarized and organized from aspects such as problem constraints, optimization objectives, and contributions made. Meanwhile, schemes are compared through the classic algorithms and innovations they used. Finally, the current challenges and future research objectives in this field are summarized to provide reference and help for the follow-up research.