Joint Offloading Research Articles

Joint Offloading and Resource Allocation for Hybrid Cloud and Edge Computing in SAGINs: A Decision Assisted Hybrid Action Space Deep Reinforcement Learning Approach

Joint Offloading and Resource Allocation for Hybrid Cloud and Edge Computing in SAGINs: A Decision Assisted Hybrid Action Space Deep Reinforcement Learning Approach

Joint Offloading and Resource Allocation for Collaborative Cloud Computing With Dependent Subtask Scheduling on Multi-Core Server

Joint Offloading and Resource Allocation for Collaborative Cloud Computing With Dependent Subtask Scheduling on Multi-Core Server

Joint Offloading Selection and Resource Allocation for Integrated Localization and Computing in Edge-intelligent Networks

Joint Offloading Selection and Resource Allocation for Integrated Localization and Computing in Edge-intelligent Networks

DRL-Based Service Function Chain Edge-to-Edge and Edge-to-Cloud Joint Offloading in Edge-Cloud Network

In this paper, we study service function chain (SFC) offloading in the edge-cloud network. Two offloading options are available for fully-loaded edge nodes: edge to edge (E2E) offloading and edge to cloud (E2C) offloading. Both E2E offloading and E2C offloading have been optimized in existing research, and Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) methods were adopted to achieve excellent performances. However, DRL-based SFC E2E and E2C joint offloading is still a research gap. In this paper, we propose a DRL-based SFC E2E and E2C joint offloading optimization algorithm for the edge-cloud network to maximize the utilization efficiency of edge resources. Twin Delayed Deep Deterministic policy gradient (TD3) algorithm is applied to the optimization problem. The simulation results indicate that the proposed algorithm has excellent convergence performance and improves the utilization efficiency of edge resources in edge-cloud network scenarios of diverse scales.

Joint optimization strategy of task offloading to mobile edge computing

Offloading strategies in mobile edge computing are hot research, whereas, existing offloading strategies at the edge hard handle the issues of multi-user intensive task scheduling, resulting in the poor utilization of network resource. Therefore, this makes the quality of experience for end users far from satisfactory. To address this, this paper proposes a novel joint offloading strategy consisting of the back propagation neural network and the genetic algorithm. Firstly, using the genetic algorithm optimizes the learning error of the back propagation neural network, and then energy consumption in the system and response delay are jointly optimized by the back propagation neural network. Under long-term total overhead-cost constraints, the joint strategy can achieve the search of the optimal solutions to generate superior calculated offloading results. Unlike those approaches devoting into reducing response delay only for end users, this work takes account into the total overhead-cost in the system thereby affording more efficient for application service providers. Multiple simulation results indicate that the proposed strategy can not only reduce the average response delay of the mobile edge computing system, but also remain a low average energy consumption.

Dynamic Resource Allocation in Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) using Machine Learning Approaches

In today's era of rapid smart equipment development and the Industrial Revolution, the application scenarios for Internet of Things (IoT) technology are expanding widely. The combination of IoT and industrial manufacturing systems gives rise to the Industrial IoT (IIoT). However, due to resource limitations such as computational units and battery capacity in IIoT devices (IIEs), it is crucial to execute computationally intensive tasks efficiently. The dynamic and continuous generation of tasks poses a significant challenge to managing the limited resources in the IIoT environment. This paper proposes a collaborative approach for optimal offloading and resource allocation of highly sensitive industrial IoT tasks. Firstly, the computation-intensive IIoT tasks are transformed into a directed acyclic graph. Then, task offloading is treated as an optimization problem, taking into account the models of processor resources and energy consumption for the offloading scheme. Lastly, a dynamic resource allocation approach is introduced to allocate computing resources to the edge-cloud server for the execution of computation-intensive tasks. The proposed joint offloading and scheduling (JOS) algorithm creates its DAG and prepare a offloading queue. This queue is designed using collaborative q-learning based reinforcement learning and allocate optimal resources to the JOS for execution of tasks present in offloading queue. For this machine learning approach is used to predict and allocate resources. The paper compares conventional and machine learning-based resource allocation methods. The machine learning approach performs better in terms of response time, delay, and energy consumption. The proposed algorithm shows that energy usage increases with task size, and response time increases with the number of users. Among the algorithms compared, JOS has the lowest waiting time, followed by DQN, while Q-learning performs the worst. Based on these findings, the paper recommends adopting the machine learning approach, specifically the JOS algorithm, for joint offloading and resource allocation.

CollOR: Distributed collaborative offloading and routing for tasks with QoS demands in multi-robot system

Multi-access edge computing (MEC) offers prospective opportunities for robots that have various computational tasks to execute in Industry 4.0, smart cities and many other fields. Computational offloading, as the key of this emerging paradigm, can leverage resourceful edge infrastructure nearby to provide computational support for these resource-limited robots. However, existing computational offloading schemes not only rarely consider that robots are geo-distributed, but also ignore the diversified quality of service (QoS) of robotic applications. Thus in this paper, the collaborative computational offloading problem for multi-robot system in MEC is studied, and a distributed scheme is proposed to jointly optimize offloading and routing for computational tasks of robots. First, we introduce the collaborative communication model of robots, construct the multi-criteria utility function related to both the QoS attributes of applications and the energy efficiency of robot, and formulate the joint offloading and routing problem. Afterwards, the QoS preference analysis mechanism is established to characterize the heterogeneous requirements of robotic applications. Next, by designing a novel collaborative robotics framework, we realize the distributed processing and adaptive strategy-making of multi-robots, and integrate the game-theoretic approach to propose a utility-aware collaborative computational offloading algorithm. Finally, simulation results validate that the proposed algorithm has significant performance improvement over the representative algorithms in different evaluation metrics, and can achieve stable and scalable performance in the scenario of the increasing demand for QoS and the growing scale of robots.

Joint Offloading Decision and Trajectory Design for UAV-Enabled Edge Computing With Task Dependency

In this paper, we investigate the joint problem of task offloading, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) trajectory design, and resource allocation for UAV-enabled edge computing, considering and highlighting the dependency among different tasks. The corresponding optimization problem, which is a mixed-integer problem, is formulated. To solve this problem, we propose an iterative method based on Block Coordinate Descent (BCD) to decompose the original problem into two subproblems. Given the offloading decision and resource allocation, the subproblem of UAV trajectory optimization is solved by convex optimization methods. Then, given the UAV trajectory, the subproblem of task offloading decision and the corresponding resource allocation is solved by dynamic programming and convex optimization methods. Simulation results show that our proposed method can significantly reduce energy consumption compared to the benchmark schemes.

IRS Assisted NOMA Aided Mobile Edge Computing With Queue Stability: Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning

By employing powerful edge servers for data processing, mobile edge computing (MEC) has been recognized as a promising technology to support emerging computation-intensive applications. Besides, non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA)-aided MEC system can further enhance the spectral-efficiency with massive tasks offloading. However, with more dynamic devices brought online and the uncontrollable stochastic channel environment, it is even desirable to deploy appealing technique, i.e., intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRS), in the MEC system to flexibly tune the communication environment and improve the system energy efficiency. In this paper, we investigate the joint offloading, communication and computation resource allocation for the IRS-assisted NOMA MEC system. We first formulate a mixed integer energy efficiency maximization problem with system queue stability constraint. We then propose the Lyapunov-function-based Mixed Integer Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (LMIDDPG) algorithm which is based on the centralized reinforcement learning (RL) framework. To be specific, we design the mixed integer action space mapping which contains both continuous mapping and integer mapping. Moreover, the award function is defined as the upper-bound of the Lyapunov drift-plus-penalty function. To enable end devices (EDs) to choose actions independently at the execution stage, we further propose the Heterogeneous Multi-agent LMIDDPG (HMA-LMIDDPG) algorithm based on distributed RL framework with homogeneous EDs and heterogeneous base station (BS) as heterogeneous multi-agent. Numerical results show that our proposed algorithms can achieve superior energy efficiency performance to the benchmark algorithms while maintaining the queue stability. Specially, the distributed structure HMA-LMIDDPG can acquire more energy efficiency gain than the centralized structure LMIDDPG.

Joint Task Offloading and Resource Allocation for Energy-Constrained Mobile Edge Computing

We consider the problem of task offloading and resource allocation in mobile edge computing (MEC). To maintain satisfactory quality of experience (QoE) of end-users, mobile devices (MDs) may offload their tasks to edge servers based on the allocated computation (e.g., CPU/GPU cycles and storage) and wireless resources (e.g., bandwidth). However, these resources could not be effectively utilized unless an encouraging resource allocation scheme can be proposed. What's worse, task offloading incurs additional MEC energy consumption, which inevitably violate the long-term MEC energy budget. Considering these two challenges, we propose an online joint offloading and resource allocation (JORA) framework under the long-term MEC energy constraint, aiming at guaranteeing the end-users' QoE. To achieve this, we leverage Lyapunov optimization to exploit the optimality of the long-term QoE maximization problem. By constructing an energy deficit queue to guide energy consumption, the problem can be solved in a real-time manner. On this basis, we propose online JORA methods in both centralized and distributed manners. Furthermore, we prove that our proposed methods enable the achievement of the close-to-optimal performance while satisfying the long-term MEC energy constraint. In addition, we conduct extensive simulations and the results show superiority in performance over other methods.

Research on Offloading Strategy for Mobile Edge Computing Based on Improved Grey Wolf Optimization Algorithm

With the development of intelligent transportation and the rapid growth of application data, the tasks of offloading vehicles in vehicle-to-vehicle communication technology are continuously increasing. To further improve the service efficiency of the computing platform, energy-efficient and low-latency mobile-edge-computing (MEC) offloading methods are urgently needed, which can solve the insufficient computing capacity of vehicle terminals. Based on an improved gray-wolf algorithm designed, an adaptive joint offloading strategy for vehicular edge computing is proposed, which does not require cloud-computing support. This strategy first establishes an offloading computing model, which takes task computing delays, computing energy consumption, and MEC server computing resources as constraints; secondly, a system-utility function is designed to transform the offloading problem into a constrained system-utility optimization problem; finally, the optimal solution to the computation offloading problem is obtained based on an improved gray-wolf optimization algorithm. The simulation results show that the proposed strategy can effectively reduce the system delay and the total energy consumption.

Joint Offloading and Resource Allocation With Diverse Battery Level Consideration in MEC System

Most of existing works related to mobile edge computing (MEC) focused on the total energy consumption or task completion time. However, for the applications with multiple players as a whole, the diverse battery levels of players should be considered to achieve better quality of experience (QoE), which is reflected in the metrics of task completion time and the lifespan of service. In this paper, we focus on QoE and diversity of devices. By jointly considering the individual battery level of different devices, we formulate an optimization problem to minimize the task completion time of the system. Firstly, we propose two necessary conditions to achieve the optimal solution of the formulated problem. In addition, we transform the formulated problem into another problem, which can be used to judge whether a given value is feasible for the formulated problem based on the proposed optimal conditions and bisection searching (BSS) algorithm. Then, we propose a method named sub-channel (SC) matching based on virtual computation resource (SMVCR) to solve the transformed problem with low computational complexity. Simulation results indicate that the BSS-SMVCR algorithm has a good performance in task completion time compared with some existing algorithms, and also can significantly extend the lifespan of the corresponding service, which is reflected in the supporting number of offloading tasks.

Water Pumping and Refilling (WPR): A Resource Allocation Algorithm for Maximizing Acceptance Ratio in Asymmetrical Edge Computing Networks

Computation offloading has received a significant amount of attention in recent years, with many researchers proposing joint offloading decision and resource allocation schemes. However, although existing delay minimization schemes achieve minimum delay costs, they do so at the cost of losing possible further maximization of the number of serviced requests. Furthermore, the asymmetry between uplink and downlink poses challenges to resource allocation in edge computing. This paper addresses this issue by formulating the joint computation offloading and edge resource allocation problem as a mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) problem in an edge-enabled asymmetrical network. Leveraging the margin between a delay-minimum scheme and a near-deadline scheme, a water pumping and refilling (WPR) algorithm is proposed to maximize the number of accepted requests. The WPR algorithm can function both as a supplementary algorithm to a given offloading scheme and as a standalone algorithm to obtain a resource allocation scheme following a customizable refilling policy. The simulation results demonstrated that the proposed algorithm outperforms delay-minimum schemes in achieving a high acceptance ratio.

Joint offloading decision and resource allocation in vehicular edge computing networks

With the rapid development of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), many new applications for Intelligent Connected Vehicles (ICVs) have sprung up. In order to tackle the conflict between delay-sensitive applications and resource-constrained vehicles, computation offloading paradigm that transfers computation tasks from ICVs to edge computing nodes has received extensive attention. However, the dynamic network conditions caused by the mobility of vehicles and the unbalanced computing load of edge nodes make ITS face challenges. In this paper, we propose a heterogeneous Vehicular Edge Computing (VEC) architecture with Task Vehicles (TaVs), Service Vehicles (SeVs) and Roadside Units (RSUs), and propose a distributed algorithm, namely PG-MRL, which jointly optimizes offloading decision and resource allocation. In the first stage, the offloading decisions of TaVs are obtained through a potential game. In the second stage, a multi-agent Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG), one of deep reinforcement learning algorithms, with centralized training and distributed execution is proposed to optimize the real-time transmission power and subchannel selection. The simulation results show that the proposed PG-MRL algorithm has significant improvements over baseline algorithms in terms of system delay.

Edge-coordinated energy-efficient video analytics for digital twin in 6G

Camera networks are essential to constructing fast and accurate mapping between virtual and physical space for digital twin. In this paper, with the aim of developing energy-efficient digital twin in 6G, we investigate real-time video analytics based on cameras mounted on mobile devices with edge coordination. This problem is challenging because 1) mobile devices are with limited battery life and lightweight computation capability, and 2) the captured video frames of mobile devices are continuous changing, which makes the corresponding tasks arrival uncertain. To achieve energy-efficient video analytics in digital twin, by taking energy consumption, analytics accuracy, and latency into consideration, we formulate a deep reinforcement learning based mobile device and edge coordination video analytics framework, which can utilized digital twin models to achieve joint offloading decision and configuration selection. The edge nodes help to collect the information on network topology and task arrival. Extensive simulation results demonstrate that our proposed framework outperforms the benchmarks on accuracy improvement and energy and latency reduction.

Task Offloading and Resource Allocation for Tasks with Varied Requirements in Mobile Edge Computing Networks

Edge computing enables devices with insufficient computing resources to offload their tasks to the edge for computing, to improve the service experience. Some existing work has noticed that the data size of offloaded tasks played a role in resource allocation shares but has not delved further into how the data size of an offloaded task affects resource allocation. Among offloaded tasks, those with larger data sizes often consume a larger share of system resources, potentially even monopolizing system resources if the data size is large enough. As a result, tasks with small or regular sizes lose the opportunity to be offloaded to the edge due to their limited data size. To address this issue, we introduce the concept of an emergency factor to penalize tasks with immense sizes for monopolizing system resources, while supporting tasks with small sizes to contend for system resources. The joint offloading decision and resource allocation problem is formulated as a mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) problem and further decomposed into an offloading decision subproblem and a resource allocation subproblem. Using the KKT conditions, we design a bisection search-based algorithm to find the optimal resource allocation scheme. Additionally, we propose a linear-search-based coordinate descent (CD) algorithm to identify the optimal offloading decision. Numerical results show that our proposed algorithm converges to the optimal scheme (for the minimal delay) when tasks are of regular size. Moreover, when tasks of immense, small and regular sizes coexist in the system, our scheme can exclude tasks of immense size from edge resource allocation, while still enabling tasks of small size to be offloaded.

Connected Vehicles Computation Task Offloading Based on Opportunism in燙ooperative Edge Computing

The traditional multi-access edge computing (MEC) capacity is overwhelmed by the increasing demand for vehicles, leading to acute degradation in task offloading performance. There is a tremendous number of resource-rich and idle mobile connected vehicles (CVs) in the traffic network, and vehicles are created as opportunistic ad-hoc edge clouds to alleviate the resource limitation of MEC by providing opportunistic computing services. On this basis, a novel scalable system framework is proposed in this paper for computation task offloading in opportunistic CV-assisted MEC. In this framework, opportunistic ad-hoc edge cloud and fixed edge cloud cooperate to form a novel hybrid cloud. Meanwhile, offloading decision and resource allocation of the user CVs must be ascertained. Furthermore, the joint offloading decision and resource allocation problem is described as a Mixed Integer Nonlinear Programming (MINLP) problem, which optimizes the task response latency of user CVs under various constraints. The original problem is decomposed into two subproblems. First, the Lagrange dual method is used to acquire the best resource allocation with the fixed offloading decision. Then, the satisfaction-driven method based on trial and error (TE) learning is adopted to optimize the offloading decision. Finally, a comprehensive series of experiments are conducted to demonstrate that our suggested scheme is more effective than other comparison schemes.

Joint Offloading and Trajectory Optimization for Complex Status Updates in UAV-Assisted Internet of Things

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can utilize multiaccess edge computing (MEC) to help Internet of Things (IoT) devices complete the complex status update by efficient offloading and proper trajectory design. However, considering that IoT devices usually communicate with UAVs in the finite blocklength regime, the uplink transmission cannot be error free. Due to the nonzero packet error probability (PEP), it is difficult to evaluate the instantaneous system performance as in the case with small blocklength. Moreover, the PEP is simultaneously coupled with the offloading parameters and trajectories of UAVs, which makes the performance optimization even more challenging. To this end, we first derive the analytical expressions of the average peak Age of Information (AoI), the average energy consumption of IoT devices and the average energy consumption of UAVs. Then, we formulate a joint optimization problem aiming to minimize the weighted sum of the three performance metrics by jointly optimizing the offloading parameters and the UAV trajectories. By dividing the original problem into multiple subproblems, an alternating optimization-based algorithm is proposed to solve it suboptimally. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of our proposed algorithm and reveal that by properly setting the transmit power and computing capacity of IoT devices, the desired tradeoff among the three performance metrics can be achieved and thus the system performance can be improved effectively.

Cloud-Edge Collaboration in Industrial Internet of Things: A Joint Offloading Scheme Based on Resource Prediction

With the continuous addition of an abundant of heterogeneous devices, the limitation of task delay has become an obstacle to the development of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). Task offloading based on edge computing can provide low-latency computing services for these tasks. However, in the actual IIoT scenario, in contrast to cloud computing, edge computing has limited resources and computing capabilities. Resource-constrained edge resources cannot meet the offloading requirements of massive industrial devices. In this article, we propose an optimal joint offloading scheme based on resource occupancy prediction for the problem of computing offloading with limited edge resources. The scheme is divided into two parts, including edge resource occupancy prediction and task offloading. Simultaneously, considering multitask and the limitations of edge resources, gate recurrent unit (GRU) is used to predict the occupancy of edge resources. Formulating an optimal strategy of task offloading by using a reinforcement learning algorithm according to the network state and predicted results. The simulation results show that the scheme can effectively reduce the average delay of tasks, while minimizing the task offloading failure rate.

Joint offloading and beamforming design in full‐duplex multi‐hop SWIPT MEC systems under non‐linear energy harvesting model

Joint offloading and beamforming design in full‐duplex multi‐hop SWIPT MEC systems under non‐linear energy harvesting model