Computation Offloading Strategy Research Articles

A Cooperative Computation Offloading Strategy With On-Demand Deployment of Multi-UAVs in UAV-Aided Mobile Edge Computing

A Cooperative Computation Offloading Strategy With On-Demand Deployment of Multi-UAVs in UAV-Aided Mobile Edge Computing

MADRLOM: A Computation offloading mechanism for software-defined cloud-edge computing power network

Cloud-edge computing power network often exhibits complex and heterogeneous structures, posing several challenges to computation offloading that significantly impact network performance and the efficient utilization of computation resources. In this paper, we propose a cloud-edge computing power network architecture that efficiently integrates cloud and edge computing resources into a single network system using software-defined networking technology to support upper-layer business applications. In this context, existing computation offloading methods struggle with issues like users' personalized requirements for latency and energy consumption, as well as the inability to adapt to dynamically complex environments. To overcome these challenges, we introduce a computation offloading mechanism, MADRLOM, focusing on the network's heterogeneity and modeling the computation offloading problem at the cloud-edge end. We formalize the offloading problem as a Markov process and employ a multi-agent deep reinforcement learning algorithm based on priority experience replay sampling to address the planning problem of computation offloading, allowing user equipment to continuously optimize offloading strategies in response to environmental changes and achieve rational resource allocation. Through dynamic offloading strategies, computation tasks can be intelligently allocated to appropriate computing nodes, thereby achieving optimal resource utilization. We utilized the Mininet simulation platform to construct the experimental environment for the software-defined cloud-edge computing power network and compared it with several representative computation offloading strategies. The experimental results demonstrate that the MADRLOM significantly reduces the total system overhead in the software-defined cloud-edge computing network and shows excellent adaptability to environmental changes.

ST-HO: Symmetry-Enhanced Energy-Efficient DAG Task Offloading Algorithm in Intelligent Transport System

In Intelligent Transport Systems (ITSs), Internet of Vehicles (IoV) communications and computation offloading technology have been introduced to assist with the burdensome sensing task processing, thus prompting a new design paradigm called mobile sensing–communication–computation (MSCC) synergy. Most researchers have focused on offloading strategy design to reduce energy consumption or execution costs, but ignore the intrinsic characteristics of tasks, which may lead to poor performance. This paper studies the offloading strategy of vehicle MSCC tasks represented by a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) structure. According to the DAG dependency of the subtasks, this paper proposes a computation offloading strategy to optimize energy consumption under time constraints. An energy consumption model for task execution is established. Then, the Simulated Annealing and Tabu Search hybrid optimization algorithm (ST-HO) is designed to solve the problem of minimizing the energy consumption. Crucially, this research integrates the concept of symmetry into the typical DAG structure of MSCC tasks, ensuring the integrity and efficiency of task execution in ITS. The simulation results show that ST-HO reduces energy consumption by at least 5.58% compared to the conventional algorithm. Particularly, the convergence speed of ST-HO is improved by 52.63% when the replication strategy of symmetric task is considered.

A Game Theoretic Approach to Computation Offloading Strategy Optimization for Non-cooperative Users in Mobile Edge Computing

Computation offloading from a user equipment (UE, also called mobile user, mobile subscriber, or mobile device) to a mobile edge cloud (MEC) provides an effective way to virtualize an ordinary smart mobile device (e.g., smartphone, tablet, handheld computer, wearable device, and personal digital assistant) into a formidable equipment, which is able to provide more and stronger functionalities than that of a laptop or a desktop computer. It is conceivable that there can be several MECs with different processing capabilities in a geographic area, and each MEC many serve many UEs with endless sequences of computation tasks, various application characteristics, and diversified communication requirements and bandwidths. Furthermore, the mobile users are competitive and selfish, which means that computation offloading strategy optimization needs to be carried out for each individual mobile user to optimize the performance of only his applications. In this paper, we conduct a mathematical study of computation offloading strategy optimization for non-cooperative users in mobile edge computing by using a game theoretic approach. The main contributions of this paper can be summarized as follows. We establish an M/G/1 queueing model to characterize multiple heterogeneous UEs and MECs, so that the average response time of all offloadable and non-offloadable tasks generated on a UE can be calculated analytically and the optimal computation offloading strategy of a UE can be defined rigorously. We construct a non-cooperative game framework for a mobile edge computing environment, in which each player (i.e., a UE) can selfishly minimize his payoff by choosing an appropriate strategy in his strategy space. We prove the existence of the Nash equilibrium of the above game. We develop algorithms to find the Nash equilibrium, including an algorithm to find the best response of a mobile user and an iterative algorithm to find the Nash equilibrium. We demonstrate numerical examples and data of our game, including numerical data for the Nash equilibrium and numerical data for the convergence of the Nash equilibrium. To the best of the author's knowledge, this is the first paper that effectively investigates computation offloading strategy optimization for multiple, heterogeneous, and competitive mobile users and multiple heterogeneous mobile edge clouds by using a non-cooperative game approach. Hence, the paper makes noticeable contributions towards the understanding of a competing mobile edge computing environment and its stabilization.

Computation Offloading Strategy Optimization with Multiple Heterogeneous Servers in Mobile Edge Computing

Computation offloading from a user equipment (UE) to a mobile edge cloud (MEC) is an effective way to ease the computational burden of mobile devices, to improve the performance of mobile applications, to reduce the energy consumption and to extend the battery lifetime of mobile user equipments. In this paper, we consider computation offloading strategy optimization with multiple heterogeneous servers in mobile edge computing. Queueing models are established for a UE and multiple heterogeneous servers from different MECs, and the average task response time of the UE and each MEC server and the average response time of all offloadable and non-offloadable tasks generated on the UE are rigorously analyzed. Three multi-variable optimization problems are formulated, i.e., minimization of average response time with average power consumption constraint, minimization of average power consumption with average response time constraint, and minimization of cost-performance ratio, so that computation offloading strategy optimization, power-performance tradeoff, as well as power-time product can all be studied in the context of load balancing. An efficient numerical method (which consists of a series of fast numerical algorithms) is developed to solve the problems of minimization of average response time with average power consumption constraint, minimization of average power consumption with average response time constraint, and minimization of cost-performance ratio. Numerical examples and data are also demonstrated to show the effectiveness of our method and to show the power-performance tradeoff, the power-time product, and the impact of various parameters. To the best of the author's knowledge, this is the first work in the literature that analytically addresses computation offloading strategy optimization with multiple heterogeneous servers in mobile edge computing.

Fuzzy Logic Based Binary Computation Offloading Scheme in V2X Communication Networks

Fuzzy Logic Based Binary Computation Offloading Scheme in V2X Communication Networks

Performance modeling and analysis for randomly walking mobile users with Markov chains

We treat user equipments (UEs) and mobile edge clouds (MECs) as M/G/1 queueing systems, which are the most suitable, powerful, and manageable models. We propose a computation offloading strategy which can satisfy all UEs served by an MEC and develop an efficient method to find such a strategy. We use discrete-time Markov chains, continuous-time Markov chains, and semi-Markov processes to characterize the mobility of UEs, and calculate the joint probability distribution of the locations of UEs at any time. We extend our Markov chains to incorporate mobility cost into consideration, and are able to obtain the average response time of a UE with location change penalty. We can algorithmically predict the overall average response time of tasks generated on a UE and also demonstrate numerical data and examples. We consider the power constrained MEC speed setting problem and develop an algorithm to solve the problem for two power consumption models.

Computation offloading for ground robotic systems communicating over WiFi – an empirical exploration on performance and energy trade-offs

ContextRobotic systems are known to perform computation-intensive tasks with limited computational resources and battery life. Such systems might benefit from offloading heavy workloads to the Cloud; however, in some cases, this implies high network traffic that degrades performance and energy consumption.GoalIn this study, we aim at evaluating the impact of different computation offloading strategies on performance and energy consumption in the context of autonomous robots.MethodWe conduct two controlled experiments involving a robotic mission based on the Turtlebot3 robot and ROS 1. The mission consists of three tasks that are recurrent in robotics and good candidates for computation offloading in research, namely, SLAM mapping, navigation stack, and object recognition. Each of the tasks is either executed on board or offloaded in a full-factorial experiment design. The obtained measures are then statistically analyzed.ResultsThe results show that offloading the object recognition task causes a more significant decrease in resource utilization and energy consumption than both SLAM mapping and navigation. However, object recognition affects the volume of network traffic significantly to the extent that it can easily cause network congestion.ConclusionsIn the context of our experiments (i.e., those involving small-scale ground ROS-based mobile robots operating under WiFi networks), offloading object recognition is beneficial in terms of performance and energy consumption. Nevertheless, large network bandwidth needs to be available for object recognition offloading. While the image resolution and frame rate have a significant impact on not only the network traffic but also energy consumption and performance, these parameters need to be carefully set so that the results of this task can be always received in time, which is particularly crucial in real-time systems.

Optimizing UAV computation offloading via MEC with deep deterministic policy gradient

AbstractMobile edge computing (MEC) seems to be highly efficient to process the generated data from IoT devices by providing computational resources locating in close range to network edge. MEC can be promising in reduction of latency and consumption of energy from data transmissions from offloading computational tasks from IoT devices to nearby edge servers. In the context of the growing IoT ecosystem, there is an increasing need for efficient data processing and communication strategies. There is a demand of bridging the gap in current research with novel optimization algorithms tailored for UAV‐assisted MEC systems, shedding light on the necessity of efficient computation offloading in meeting the demands of the IoT era. In this article, a computation offloading optimization algorithm is proposed which is based on deep deterministic policy gradient for realistic Aurelia X6 Pro unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)‐assisted MEC systems. The proposed algorithm optimizes the offloading decision for UAVs by taking task characteristics and the communication environment into consideration. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, comprehensive simulations were conducted, and the results indicate substantial improvements in MEC systems' competency. Our research not only showcases the feasibility of deep deterministic policy gradient in UAV‐assisted MEC systems but also highlights the importance of developing efficient computation offloading strategies for the evolving landscape of IoT and edge computing.

A Multi-edge Collaborative Computational Offloading Scheme Based on Game Theory

<p>A common approach in existing collaborative edge computing offloading schemes is to partition tasks into independent sub-tasks and offload them to participating servers. However, in practice, these sub-tasks often have dependencies, resulting in waiting time. To address this problem, we propose a collaborative computation offloading scheme based on Stackelberg game theory and graph theory (CCOSGG). First, we introduce a task clustering method based on graph theory, which uses task reconstruction and graph partition algorithm to cluster strongly related sub-tasks into appropriately sized clusters. Second, we use Stackelberg game theory to introduce an incentive mechanism that encourages remote edges to participate in the collaborative offloading. Finally, simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can minimize latency and energy consumption at different network scales.</p> <p> </p>

Reverse Auction-Based Computation Offloading and Resource Allocation in Mobile Cloud-Edge Computing

This paper proposes a novel Reverse Auction-based Computation Offloading and Resource Allocation Mechanism, named RACORAM for the mobile Cloud-Edge computing. The basic idea is that the Cloud Service Center (CSC) recruits edge server owners to replace it to accommodate offloaded computation from nearby resource-constraint Mobile Devices (MDs). In RACORAM, the reverse auction is used to stimulate edge server owners to participate in the offloading process, and the reverse auction-based computation offloading and resource allocation problem is formulated as a Mixed Integer Nonlinear Programming (MINLP) problem, aiming to minimize the cost of the CSC. The original problem is decomposed into an equivalent master problem and subproblem, and low-complexity algorithms are proposed to solve the related optimization problems. Specifically, a Constrained Gradient Descent Allocation Method (CGDAM) is first proposed to determine the computation resource allocation strategy, and then a Greedy Randomized Adaptive Search Procedure based Winning Bid Scheduling Method (GWBSM) is proposed to determine the computation offloading strategy. Meanwhile, the CSC’s payment determination for the winning edge server owners is also presented. Simulations are conducted to evaluate the performance of RACORAM, and the results show that RACORAM is very close to the optimal method with significantly reduced computational complexity, and greatly outperforms the other baseline methods in terms of the CSC’s cost under different scenarios.

A Deep-Reinforcement-Learning-Based Computation Offloading With Mobile Vehicles in Vehicular Edge Computing

Vehicular edge networks involves edge servers that are close to mobile devices to provide extra computation resource to complete the computation tasks of mobile devices with low latency and high reliability. Considerable efforts on computation offloading in vehicular edge networks have been developed to reduce the energy consumption and computation latency, in which roadside units (RSUs) are usually considered as the fixed edge servers. Nonetheless, the computation offloading with considering mobile vehicles as mobile edge servers in vehicular edge networks still needs to be further investigated. To this end, in this paper, we propose a deep reinforcement learning based computation offloading with mobile vehicles in vehicular edge computing, namely DRL-COMV, in which some vehicles (such as autonomous vehicle) are deployed and considered as the mobile edge servers that move in vehicular edge networks and cooperate with fixed edge servers to provide extra computation resource for mobile devices, in order to assist in completing the computation tasks of these mobile devices with great QoE (i.e.,low latency) for mobile devices. Particularly, the computation offloading model with considering both mobile and fixed edge servers is conducted to achieve the computation tasks offloading through vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications, and a collaborative route planning is considered for these mobile edge servers to move in vehicular edge networks with objective of improving efficiency of computation offloading. Then, a deep reinforcement learning approach with designing rational reward function is proposed to determine the effective computation offloading strategies for multiple mobile devices and multiple edge servers with objective of maximizing both QoE (i.e., low latency) for mobile devices. Through performance evaluations, our results show that our proposed DRL-COMV scheme can achieve a great convergence and stability. Additionally, our results also demonstrate that our DRL-COMV scheme also can achieve better both QoE and task offloading requests hit ratio for mobile devices in comparison with existing approaches (i.e., DDPG, IMOPSOQ and GABDOS).

FlexEdge: Digital Twin-Enabled Task Offloading for UAV-Aided Vehicular Edge Computing

Integrating unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) into vehicular networks have shown high potentials in affording intensive computing tasks. In this paper, we study the digital twin driven vehicular edge computing networks for adaptively computing resource management where an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) named <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">FlexEdge</i> acts as a flying server. In particular, we first formulate an energy consumption minimization problem by jointly optimizing UAV trajectory and computation resource under the practical constraints. To address such a challenging problem, we then build the computation offloading process as a Markov decision process and propose a deep reinforcement learning-based proximal policy optimization algorithm to dynamically learn the computation offloading strategy and trajectory design policy. Numerical results indicate that our proposed algorithm can achieve quick convergence rate and significantly reduce the system energy consumption.

An optimized environment-adaptive computation offloading strategy for real-time cross-camera task in edge computing networks

An optimized environment-adaptive computation offloading strategy for real-time cross-camera task in edge computing networks

Handover-Enabled Dynamic Computation Offloading for Vehicular Edge Computing Networks

The computation offloading technique is a promising solution that empowers computationally limited resource devices to run delay-constrained applications efficiently. Vehicular edge computing incorporates the processing capabilities into the vehicles, and thus, provides computing services for other vehicles through computation offloading. Mobility affects the communication environment and leads to critical challenges for computation offloading. In this paper, we consider an intelligent task offloading scenario for vehicular environments including smart vehicles and roadside units, which can cooperate to perform resource sharing. Intending to minimize the average offloading cost which takes into account energy consumption together with delay in transmission and processing phases, we formulate the task offloading problem as an optimization problem and implement an algorithm based on deep reinforcement learning with Double Q-learning which allows user equipments to learn the offloading cost performance by observing the environment and make steady sequences of offloading decisions despite the uncertainties of the environment. Besides, concerning the high mobility of the environment, we propose a handover-enabled computation offloading strategy that leads to a better quality of service and experience for users in beyond 5G and 6G heterogeneous networks. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme achieves low-cost performance compared to the existing offloading decision strategies in the literature.

Energy-Efficient and QoS-Aware Computation Offloading in GEO/LEO Hybrid Satellite Networks

Benefiting from advanced satellite payload technologies, edge computing servers can be deployed on satellites to achieve orbital computing and reduce the mission processing delay. However, geostationary Earth orbit (GEO) satellites are hindered by long-distance communication, whereas low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites are restricted by time windows. Relying solely on GEO or LEO satellites cannot meet the strict quality of service (QoS) requirements of on-board missions while conserving energy consumption. In this paper, we propose a computation offloading strategy for GEO/LEO hybrid satellite networks that minimizes total energy consumption while guaranteeing the QoS requirements of multiple missions. We first innovatively transform the on-board partial computation offloading problem, which is a mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) problem, into a minimum cost maximum flow (MCMF) problem. Then, the successive shortest path-based computation offloading (SSPCO) method is introduced to obtain the offloading decision in polynomial time. To evaluate the effectiveness and performance of SSPCO, we conduct a series of numerical experiments and compare SSPCO with other offloading methods. The experimental results demonstrate that our proposed SSPCO outperforms the reference methods in terms of total energy consumption, QoS violation degree, and algorithm running time.

Energy-efficient computation offloading strategy with task priority in cloud assisted multi-access edge computing

Multi-access edge computing (MEC) provides cloud-like services at the edge of the radio access network close to mobile devices (MDs). This infrastructure can provide low-latency services to MDs and significantly reduce the pressure on the backbone network. However, the computing resources configured on an edge server (ES) are limited compared to a cloud data center (DC). It is difficult for ESs to satisfy the demands of MDs anytime and anywhere. Thus, a new paradigm that combines DC with ESs has been proposed to provide better capability and flexibility, namely, cloud-assisted MEC (CA-MEC). In CA-MEC, MDs can offload tasks to ESs and the DC, which means more elasticity and more complicated offloading decisions. This paper studies MDs’ energy-efficient computation offloading strategy in CA-MEC, which considers two different priority tasks. First, we establish mathematical models to characterize the CA-MEC environment. Second, we mathematically analyze the MD’s average task response time and average power consumption. Third, we propose efficient numerical algorithms to obtain a computation offloading strategy to optimize the energy efficiency of the target MD. Finally, we demonstrate several numerical examples and construct a comparative experiment to show the effectiveness of our algorithms.

An O-MAPPO scheme for joint computation offloading and resources allocation in UAV assisted MEC systems

The combination of mobile edge computing (MEC) systems with unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has gained a high profile in recent years due to its high flexibility and ability to handle intensive tasks. The computation offloading strategy and the resource allocation scheme affect the system performance significantly. Moreover, the system complexity increases with the numbers of users and servers exponentially. It is challenging to consider jointly the computation offloading and the resource allocation in MEC systems that have multiple users and multiple servers. This paper formulates the joint resources management in the UAV assisted MEC network as a partially observable markov decision process and proposes an online multi-agent proximal policy optimization (O-MAPPO) scheme to improve the energy efficiency while guaranteeing the requirements in task, power consumption, computation, and time. Specifically, users and servers are set as agents. All agents cooperatively make decisions of computation offloading and resource allocation to maximize the energy efficiency. Simulation results show that the O-MAPPO scheme significantly outperforms benchmark algorithms in robustness and stability.

Joint Service Caching and Computation Offloading Scheme Based on Deep Reinforcement Learning in Vehicular Edge Computing Systems

Vehicular edge computing (VEC) is a new computing paradigm that enhances vehicular performance by introducing both computation offloading and service caching, to resource-constrained vehicles and ubiquitous edge servers. Recent developments of autonomous vehicles enable a variety of applications that demand high computing resources and low latency, such as automatic driving, auto navigation, etc. However, the highly dynamic topology of vehicular networks and limited caching space at resource-constrained edge servers calls for intelligent design of caching placement and computation offloading. Meanwhile, service caching decisions are highly correlated to the computation offloading decisions, which pose a great challenge to effectively design service caching and computation offloading strategies. In this paper, we investigate a joint optimization problem by integrating service caching and computation offloading in a general VEC scenario with time-varying task requests. To minimize the average task processing delay, we formulate the problem using long-term mixed integer non-linear programming (MINLP) and propose an algorithm based on deep reinforcement learning to obtain a suboptimal solution with low computation complexity. The simulation results demonstrate that our proposed scheme exhibits an effective performance improvement in task processing delay compared with other representative benchmark methods.

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.