Computation Offloading Algorithm Research Articles

Multi-objective optimization algorithm for multi-workflow computation offloading in resource-limited IIoT

Industrial internet of things (IIoT) connects traditional industrial devices with the network to provide intelligent services, which is regarded as the key technology for achieving Industry 4.0 and enabling the transformation of the manufacturing sector. Multi-access edge computing (MEC) has brought significant opportunities to expedite the development of IIoT. However, the unique task characteristics and dense deployment of IIoT devices, coupled with the resource starvation problem (RSP) arising from the limited resources of edge servers, pose challenges to the direct applicability of existing MEC algorithms in MEC-assisted IIoT scenarios. To this end, a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm is proposed to simultaneously optimize delay and energy consumption for multi-workflow execution in resource-limited IIoT. First, the initialization of execution location based on delay and the initialization of execution order satisfying the priority constraint can generate high-quality initial solutions. Then, the improved crossover and mutation operations guide the population evolution, which can span the large infeasible solution region. Finally, dynamic task scheduling (DTS) dynamically changes the execution location of tasks affected by RSP according to the execution efficiency, so as to avoid the tasks blindly waiting for server resources. The comprehensive simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in achieving a balance between the execution delay and energy consumption of IIoT devices.

An efficient scheduling scheme for intelligent driving tasks in a novel vehicle-edge architecture considering mobility and load balancing

With the continuous popularization and evolution of 5G and 6G, mobile edge computing has achieved rapid development. This study explores the New Generation Mobile Edge Computing (NGMEC) architecture, which leverages numerous mobile nodes to provide users with enhanced computing services. Despite its advantages, NGMEC faces challenges such as high node mobility, load balancing difficulties, and incomplete environmental perception by agents, particularly in intelligent driving task offloading scenarios. We address these challenges by introducing novel applications of NGMEC and proposing specialized algorithms for node selection and load balancing. Furthermore, to tackle the issue of environmental perception incompleteness in NGMEC task offloading, we develop the Gated Recurrent Self-Encoding Deep Reinforcement Learning (GRSE-DRL) algorithm. Our research also includes the development of two platforms: the End-Edge-Cloud Simulation Experiment Platform and the Edge Computing Offloading Algorithm Energy Efficiency Test Platform. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed scheme effectively maintains load balance among nodes, enhances task completion and connection success rates, and optimizes the trade-off between transmission delay and intelligent driving algorithms’ effectiveness, enabling more efficient decision-making.

LEO satellites selection-based computation offloading algorithm in aircraft–satellite multi-access edge computing networks

The emergence of sixth-generation (6G) mobile networks and non-terrestrial networks (NTNs) has led to increased interest in low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite-based communication networks for their potential to provide global coverage and ubiquitous connectivity. In this paper, we investigate the LEO satellites selection-based computation offloading problem in the aircraft–satellite multi-access edge computing (ASMEC) network, where LEO satellites and edge computing processors are integrated to provide ubiquitous and low-latency communication and computation services for aircraft during flights. In contrast to most existing works, which directly assume a fixed number of satellites or orbits in satellite-based MEC networks, we investigate the problem of how many satellites and which satellites to select in the ASMEC network. Our objective is to minimize the average total time delay of tasks during aircraft–satellite computation offloading. To achieve this, we formulate a nonlinear integer programming (NLIP) problem and propose the LEO satellites selection-based computation offloading (LSSBCO) algorithm to solve it, which includes the shortest aircraft–satellite distance based access satellite selection (ASS-SD) algorithm and the nearest k(t) neighboring satellites selection (NSS-k(t)) algorithm. We evaluate the performance of the LSSBCO algorithm in terms of the average total time delay, the maximum throughput, the average aircraft–satellite distance, the average connection duration, and the number of satellite handovers. Numerical results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the benchmark algorithms with a lower average total time delay.

Energy-Stabilized Computing Offloading Algorithm for UAVs With Energy Harvesting

Energy-Stabilized Computing Offloading Algorithm for UAVs With Energy Harvesting

Primal-Dual-Based Computation Offloading Method for Energy-Aware Cloud-Edge Collaboration

In the context of the Internet of Things (IoT), resource-constrained mobile edge computing (MEC) can no longer fully meet the needs of the rapidly growing number of mobile users; hence, cloud-edge collaborative computing has been developed. This paper focuses on the total energy consumption of the system and heterogeneity of scenarios, and a collaborative cloud-edge computation offloading approach with near real-time decision making is proposed. First, a general cloud-edge collaborative computation offloading model is abstracted from typical applications, and the energy consumption for edge and cloud offloading is calculated separately by considering both transmission and computational energy consumption. The problem is formulated as an integer linear program (ILP) with multidimensional resource constraints and is proven to be NP-hard. Then, a novel primal-dual computation offloading (PDCO) algorithm is designed to make near real-time offloading decisions one by one based on the sequential arrival of task requests. The approximation ratio of PDCO is derived through the weak duality property and the price-resource increment relationship. The experimental results show that under the guidance of total cost influenced by marginal prices, PDCO not only avoids blindly making offloading decisions but also effectively alleviates the shortage of resources on edge servers (ESs), approaching the optimal performance in terms of total energy consumption and resource utilization.

IScene: An interpretable framework with hierarchical edge services for scene risk identification in 6G internet of vehicles

AbstractScene risk identification is essential for the traffic safety of Internet of Vehicles. However, the performance of existing risk identification approaches is heavily limited by the imbalanced historical data and the poor model interpretability. Meanwhile, the large processing delay and the potential privacy leakage threat also restrict their application. In this paper, a novel risk identification model is proposed that leverages the synthetic minority over‐sampling technique nearest neighbor (SMOTEENN) method to balance between high‐risk and low‐risk data. The risk identification model has fine interpretability by using recursive feature elimination cross validation (RFECV) with the Shapley additive explanation (SHAP) to analyze the importance of different features, and further elaborately design the Focal Loss function to tackle the disparity between the difficult and easy sample learning. The proposed interpretability scene risk identification framework, named iScene, is built on the infrastructure of 6G space‐air‐ground integrated networks (SAGINs) with blockchain assistance. The model updata efficiency and privacy preservation are effectively enhanced. An elastic computing offloading algorithm is applied to minimize the system overhead under the hierarchical edge service architecture. The experimental evaluation is carried out to verify the effectiveness of the proposed risk identification framework. The results indicate that the G‐Mean value is increased by 23.4%, while the task average response delay is reduced by 21.2%, compared to that in the traditional risk identification approaches with local computing services.

A PDDQNLP Algorithm for Energy Efficient Computation Offloading in UAV-Assisted MEC

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-assisted mobile edge computing (MEC) is a promising technology to provide computational services to ground terminal devices (TDs) in remote areas or for emergency incidents with its flexibility and mobility. This paper aims to maximize the UAV’s energy efficiency while considering the fairness of offloading. We formulate this optimization problem by jointly considering the UAV flight time, the UAV 3D trajectory, the TD binary offloading decisions, and the time allocated to TDs, which is a mixed-integer nonlinear programming problem. The problem is transformed into two sub-problems and we propose a PDDQNLP (parametrized dueling deep Q-network and linear programming) algorithm based on the combination of deep reinforcement learning (DRL) and linear programming (LP) to address them. For the first sub-problem, a DRL-based algorithm is used to optimize the TD offloading decisions, the UAV trajectory, and the UAV flight time. The action space is hybrid that contains discrete actions (e.g., binary offloading) and continuous actions (e.g., UAV flight time). Therefore, we parameterize the action space and propose the PDDQN algorithm, which combines the DDPG algorithm for handling the continuous action space and the Dueling DQN algorithm for handling the discrete action space. According to the solution obtained from the first sub-problem, the LP is used to adjust the time allocated to TDs in the second sub-problem. The numerical results show that the PDDQNLP algorithm outperforms its counterparts.

Multitask and Multiobjective Joint Resource Optimization for UAV-Assisted Air-Ground Integrated Networks Under Emergency Scenarios

To face the challenges in emergency scenarios, a multi-task and multi-objective optimization algorithm for computation offloading and relay communication is investigated for the air-ground integrated networks, composed of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), emergency vehicle users (EVUs) and ground sensor nodes (GSNs). We propose an HFL-DDQN algorithm, which combines horizontal federated learning (HFL) with double deep Q-network (DDQN). First, UAVs are separated into two clusters according to the services they provide, i.e., edge computing or relay communication. Next, the optimization problems are formulated for two types of services respectively. For the computation offloading tasks of EVUs, the optimization objective is to minimize the weighted sum of delay and energy consumption. For the sensor data transmission of GSNs, the optimization objective is to maximize the minimum rate of relay links. We define the total cost of the system as the sum of two types of services. Then, federated aggregation is used to joint training the global neural networks model without sharing raw data. Furthermore, the DDQN is improved by adopting prioritized experience replay to achieve better convergence. The simulation results show that the proposed HFL-DDQN algorithm not only outperforms the state-of-art baselines in terms of the system cost, but also promotes the generalization in execution process, which is especially applicable to the rescue scene under accidents.

An efficient many-objective optimization algorithm for computation offloading in heterogeneous vehicular edge computing network

Vehicular Edge Computing (VEC) provides flexible distributed computing paradigm for vehicular network through computation offloading. With the advent of a growing of modern vehicle applications, the challenge for VEC network to fulfill the expansive demands from various suppliers, users and environments is increasingly prominent. This paper formulates a many-objective computation offloading problem in heterogeneous VEC network aiming to fulfill the diversified optimization requirements, including minimizing the task completion time, energy consumption and resource costs as well as load balance. A many-objective optimization algorithm named MaOITGO-CO is proposed to solve the formulated problem based on ITGO (Invasive Tumor Growth Optimization) by simulating the growth patterns of tumor cells. Specifically, considering the characteristics of computation offloading in VEC scenarios such as mobility, real-time requirements and the variety of tasks and resources, four types of tumor cells are equipped with different search strategies to enhance the search effectiveness and efficiency. The simulation results show that the proposed approach can provide high quality Pareto solutions for computation offloading problem, which outperforms other widely used algorithms in terms of convergency and diversity. Furthermore, the results of scalability experiments validate the availability of MaOITGO-CO when the problem is extended to different scales of both tasks and computing resources.

A survey of security, privacy and trust issues in vehicular computation offloading and their solutions using blockchain.

Continuous improvement in transportation systems and smart vehicles' appearance make new highly intensive applications. Complex applications need high-performance capabilities, real-time responses, and generate massive amounts of data to process and exchange. This presents the idea of vehicular edge computing (VEC), which is proposed to handle complex applications and satisfy smart vehicle processing requirements. VEC enables computation offloading to an edge server to reduce communication latency, execution cost and energy consumption greatly. However, offloading to another node opens up new vulnerabilities regarding security and privacy. Moreover, trust issues in such an untrustworthy environment need an effective trust management solution and incentive mechanisms to improve overall security. This will increase the computation offloading success rate and the vehicles' willingness to share their resources. Particularly given the high transportability and heterogeneity of vehicular networks, the conventional security and trust management methods are inadequate. Blockchain, the rapidly emerging trend technology, is a unique solution that can help overcome security and privacy issues and meet trust management and incentive mechanism goals. Blockchain's immutable distributed ledger, traceability, consensus validation system and smart contract features can improve vehicular network security. Although most research is focused on enhancing the performance of computation offloading algorithms, blockchain security solutions in computation offloading scenarios are not fully discussed. Thus, security and trust issues related to computation offloading in VEC environments need more consideration since supporting the new complex vehicular applications is essential. Therefore, this paper provides a review of recent surveys and studies, an overview of VEC, computation offloading and blockchain, in addition to discussing security, privacy and trust in vehicular networks and computation offloading while considering blockchain as a distributed security solution. We propose a new paradigm called blockchain edge of vehicle (BEoV) at the end, which enables several blockchain-based security services for vehicular computation offloading in particular.

Deep reinforcement learning-based edge computing offloading algorithm for software-defined IoT

Edge computing offloading can effectively solve the problem of insufficient computing resources for terminal devices and improve the performance and efficiency of the system. When network states and tasks change rapidly, data-driven intelligent algorithms have difficulty obtaining comprehensive statistics for accurate prediction, resulting in degraded performance of computational offloading and difficulty in adaptive adjustment. It is a current challenge to improve the environment-aware, intelligent optimization so that the computational offloading algorithm can adapt to the dynamic changes in network state and task demands, thus achieving global multi-objective optimization. This paper presents optimized edge computing offloading algorithm for software-defined IoT. First, to provide global state for making decisions, a software defined edge computing (SDEC) architecture is proposed. The edge layer is integrated into the control layer of software-defined IoT, and multiple controllers share the global network state information via east–west message exchange. Moreover, an edge computing offloading algorithm in software-defined IoT (ECO-SDIoT) based on deep reinforcement learning is proposed. It enables the controllers to offload the computing task to the most appropriate edge server according to the global states, task requirements, and reward. Finally, the performance metrics for edge computing offloading were evaluated in terms of unit task processing latency, load balancing of edge servers, task processing energy consumption, and task completion rate, respectively. Simulation results show that ECO-SDIoT can effectively reduce task completion time and energy consumption compared with other strategies.

Asynchronous Federated Deep Reinforcement Learning-Based URLLC-Aware Computation Offloading in Space-Assisted Vehicular Networks

Space-assisted vehicular networks (SAVN) provide seamless coverage and on-demand data processing services for user vehicles (UVs). However, ultra-reliable and low-latency communication (URLLC) demands imposed by emerging vehicular applications are hard to be satisfied in SAVN by existing computation offloading techniques. Traditional deep reinforcement learning algorithms are unsuitable for highly dynamic SAVN due to the underutilization of environment observations. An AsynchronouS federaTed deep Q-learning (DQN)-basEd and URLLC-aware cOmputatIon offloaDing algorithm (ASTEROID) is presented in this paper to achieve throughput maximization considering the long-term URLLC constraints. Specifically, we first establish an extreme value theory-based URLLC constraint model. Second, the task offloading and computation resource allocation are decomposed by employing Lyapunov optimization. Finally, an asynchronous federated DQN-based (AF-DQN) algorithm is presented to address the UV-side task offloading problem. The server-side computation resource allocation is settled by an queue backlog-aware algorithm. Simulation results verify that ASTEROID achieves superior throughput and URLLC performances.

Drone Swarm Path Planning for Mobile Edge Computing in Industrial Internet of Things

Drone-swarm-assisted mobile edge computing (MEC) provides extra computation and storage capacity for smart city applications and the industrial Internet of Things. To solve the problems of traditional fixed base stations in complex terrain, including cost of deployment, transmission loss of telecommunication, and limited coverage, this paper brings forward the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as mobile edge computing nodes in the air. For the purpose of matching the dynamic mobile devices and UAV trajectory, this paper raises a multi-UAVs-assisted mobile edge computing offloading algorithm based on global and local path planning controlled by ground station and onboard computer. Firstly, this paper considers a drone swarm scheduling and allocation strategy based on the priority of monitoring areas, UAVs residual energy and distance to target points, so that to minimize the global flight length and energy consumption. Secondly, based on user mobility, this paper calculates the optimal communication coverage of UAV, and jointly optimizes the local path planning and computing offloading, so that to maximize the number of offloading services and minimize the total latency in completing the computation task. Finally, based on the total latency and energy consumption of path planning and computation offloading, a UAV cluster computation offloading strategy with optimized energy efficiency is realized. Experimental results prove that the proposed algorithm can provide more offloading services while obtaining shorter path length and greater energy efficiency.

Analysis of Communication Simulation Model of Urban Comprehensive Energy Network Based on the Internet of Things

In urban construction, all energy infrastructures have been realized by the information structure. However, due to the non-uniform structure of each energy network, the data cannot be more compatible, and the communication guarantee based on the Internet of Things is one of the most urgent problems to be solved. In this paper, a reasonable network computing offloading model is designed in the edge computing layer, and the computing offloading algorithm is introduced. Considering the dependency between subtasks, an optimization problem is established, and a central scheduling algorithm is proposed to solve it. An optimized distributed unloading algorithm is proposed according to the solution idea of the classical distributed unloading algorithm. Simulation results show that the optimized distributed unloading algorithm proposed in this paper has good solving efficiency and performance, and reduces the task processing delay. At the same time, the experimental simulation proves that the efficiency of multiple edge servers in processing subtasks is higher than that of a single server. It is established that changing the convergence speed and communication delay stability margin of the system by changing the system eigenvalue is beneficial to design a better communication network structure to keep the system stable.

Computation Offloading Method for Large-Scale Factory Access in Edge-Edge Collaboration Mode

Large-scale manufacturing enterprises have complex business processes in their production workshops, and the edge-edge collaborative business model cannot adapt to the traditional computation offloading methods, which leads to the problem of load imbalance. For this problem, a computation offloading algorithm based on edge-edge collaboration mode for large-scale factory access is proposed, called the edge and edge collaborative computation offloading (EECCO) algorithm. First, the method partitions the directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) on edge server and terminal industrial equipment, then updates the tasks using a synchronization policy based on set theory to improve the accuracy effectively, and finally achieves load balancing through processor allocation. The experimental results show that the method shortens the processing time by improving computational resource utilization and employs a heterogeneous distributed system to achieve high computing performance when processing large-scale task sets.

Genetic algorithm for delay efficient computation offloading in dispersed computing

As a promising computing paradigm, dispersed computing uses all devices with computing, communication, and storage capabilities as ubiquitous network computing points (NCPs) to achieve low-latency, efficient collaborative computation for tasks, which greatly supports the newly arising computationally intensive applications. However, how to fully utilize the limited resources of NCPs to reduce task latency remains a challenging problem. Considering the heterogeneous communication modes and computing capabilities of NCPs, a distributed multi-hop computing task offloading framework based on an improved genetic algorithm is proposed to address this challenge, where tasks can be recursively offloaded among NCPs. The algorithm reduces the solution space dimension by designing filter chains to filter schedulable nodes before the initialization phase, and improves the population initialization, crossover operator to speed up the convergence, and avoids the risk of overconsumption of resources due to circular scheduling. Compared with the D2D-Fogging and Min–Min algorithms, the experimental results show that our scheduling algorithm improves the global resource utilization by 14% and 8%, and reduces the average task computation delay by 39.18% and 28.21%.

A multi-aerial base station assisted joint computation offloading algorithm based on D3QN in edge VANETs

With the rapid development of Internet of Vehicle technology, vehicular edge computing is gradually becoming a key technology for task offloading and resource scheduling. However, the application of traditional base station and vehicle edge network processing introduces large latency, energy consumption and QoS degradation issues for sensitive intensive tasks. To address these issues, we propose a Multi-Aerial Base Station Assisted Joint Computation Offload algorithm based on D3QN in Edge VANETs (MAJVD3). The use of SDN Controllers senses global information and enables efficient resource scheduling. Firstly, a non-convex optimization problem is formulated and proved as an NP-hard problem by combining optimization variables, metrics and environmental constraints. Secondly, we propose to use ϵ-greedy MAJVD3 algorithm for interactive exploration with a dynamic environment to find the optimal solution to non-convex optimization problem. Finally, the network performance, applicability and neural network learning are evaluated separately, and the simulation results shows the effectiveness and convergence of the proposed algorithm. Compared with the existing baseline algorithms, the proposed MAJVD3 algorithm improves the network utility by 4.8%, 100% and 149.6%, respectively. The task latency is reduced by 3%, 30.4% and 30.7%, respectively, and the energy consumption is reduced by 4.8%, 42.3% and 45.7%, respectively.

E-MOGWO Algorithm for Computation Offloading in Fog Computing

Despite the advances mobile devices have endured, they still remain resource-restricted computing devices, so there is a need for a technology that supports these devices. An emerging technology that supports such resource-constrained devices is called fog computing. End devices can offload the task to close-by fog nodes to improve the quality of service and experience. Since computation offloading is a multiobjective problem, we need to consider many factors before taking offloading decisions, such as task length, remaining battery power, latency, communication cost, etc. This study uses the multiobjective grey wolf optimization (MOGWO) technique for optimizing offloading decisions. This is the first time MOGWO has been applied for computation offloading in fog computing. A gravity reference point method is also integrated with MOGWO to propose an enhanced multiobjective grey wolf optimization (E-MOGWO) algorithm. It finds the optimal offloading target by taking into account two parameters, i.e., energy consumption and computational time in a heterogeneous, scalable, multi-fog, multi-user environment. The proposed E-MOGWO is compared with MOGWO, non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) and accelerated particle swarm optimization (APSO). The results showed that the proposed algorithm achieved better results than existing approaches regarding energy consumption, computational time and the number of tasks successfully executed.

Multi-index evaluation learning-based computation offloading optimization for power internet of things

Cloud–edge-device collaborative computation offloading can provide flexible and real-time data processing services for massive resource-constrained devices in power internet of things (PIoT). However, the computation offloading optimization in PIoT still faces several challenges such as high computation offloading delay caused by uncertain information, coupling between task offloading and computation resource allocation, and degraded optimization performance due to the lack of multi-index consideration. To address the above challenges, we formulate a joint optimization problem of task offloading and computation resource allocation to minimize the average computation offloading delay. Specifically, a multi-index evaluation learning-based two-stage computation offloading (MINCO) algorithm is proposed to decouple the joint optimization problem into two-stage subproblems and solve them with evaluation and learning of multiple indexes including data flow characteristic, service priority, empirical average computation offloading delay, and empirical arm selection times. Simulation results show that compared with the baseline 1 and baseline 2 algorithms, MINCO improves the average computation offloading delay by 14.67% and 30.71%. Moreover, MINCO can evaluate different service priorities and data flow characteristics to meet different requirements of computation offloading delay.

Non-cooperative game algorithms for computation offloading in mobile edge computing environments

Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) has become a promising technology for 5G networks. Computation offloading is an essential issue of MEC, which enables mobile User Equipment (UE) to enjoy rich wireless resources and huge computing power anywhere. This paper considers the Quality-of-Experience (QoE) of UEs in 5G MEC systems and presents a dynamic non-cooperative game (QCOG-DG) algorithm and a static non-cooperative game (QCOG-SG) algorithm for computation offloading of MEC applications. We establish an MEC computation offloading model by considering the QoE requirements of UEs, and discuss the communication overheads, computation cost, and energy consumption models to minimize the energy consumption and time delay of each UE. Considering that there are multiple UEs who want to offload their computation tasks to a resource-constrained MEC server, and each UE is selfish and competitive, we formulate the problem of computation offloading decision as a non-cooperative game model. We prove the existence of a Nash Equilibrium (NE) solution for the proposed game model. In addition, we propose an algorithm that jointly optimizes energy consumption and time delay under QoE preferences to achieve optimal offloading benefits for each UE. Moreover, we respectively propose a dynamic non-cooperative game (QCOG-DG) algorithm and a static non-cooperative game (QCOG-SG) algorithm to efficiently find the NE solution. Extensive simulation experiments are conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed MEC computation offloading model and the QCOG-DG and QCOG-SG algorithms. Simulation results show that the proposed QCOG-DG algorithm can efficiently find the NE solutions in the MEC scenarios with UEs of different sizes.