Mobile Edge Cloud Computing Research Articles

Delay-aware resource allocation for partial computation offloading in mobile edge cloud computing

Mobile Edge Cloud Computing (MECC), as a promising partial computing offloading solution, has provided new possibilities for compute-intensive and delay-sensitive mobile applications, which can simultaneously leverage edge computing and cloud services. However, designing resource allocation strategies for MECC faces an extremely challenging problem of simultaneously satisfying the end-to-end latency requirements and minimum resource allocation of multiple mobile applications. To address this issue, we comprehensively consider the randomness of computing request arrivals, service time, and dynamic computing resources. We model the MECC network as a two-level tandem queue consisting of two sequential computing processing queues, each with multiple servers. We apply a deep reinforcement learning algorithm called Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG) to learn the computing speed adjustment strategy for the tandem queue. This strategy ensures the end-to-end latency requirements of multiple mobile applications while preventing overuse of the total computing resources of edge servers and cloud servers. Numerous simulation experiments demonstrate that our approach is significantly superior to other methods in dynamic network environments.

Efficient microservices offloading for cost optimization in diverse MEC cloud networks

In recent years, mobile applications have proliferated across domains such as E-banking, Augmented Reality, E-Transportation, and E-Healthcare. These applications are often built using microservices, an architectural style where the application is composed of independently deployable services focusing on specific functionalities. Mobile devices cannot process these microservices locally, so traditionally, cloud-based frameworks using cost-efficient Virtual Machines (VMs) and edge servers have been used to offload these tasks. However, cloud frameworks suffer from extended boot times and high transmission overhead, while edge servers have limited computational resources. To overcome these challenges, this study introduces a Microservices Container-Based Mobile Edge Cloud Computing (MCBMEC) environment and proposes an innovative framework, Optimization Task Scheduling and Computational Offloading with Cost Awareness (OTSCOCA). This framework addresses Resource Matching, Task Sequencing, and Task Scheduling to enhance server utilization, reduce service latency, and improve service bootup times. Empirical results validate the efficacy of MCBMEC and OTSCOCA, demonstrating significant improvements in server efficiency, reduced service latency, faster service bootup times, and notable cost savings. These outcomes underscore the pivotal role of these methodologies in advancing mobile edge computing applications amidst the challenges of edge server limitations and traditional cloud-based approaches.

Joint Optimization of Service Migration and Resource Allocation in Mobile Edge–Cloud Computing

Joint Optimization of Service Migration and Resource Allocation in Mobile Edge–Cloud Computing

Communication and computational resource optimization for Industry 5.0 smart devices empowered by MEC

Smart devices in Industry 5.0, such as sensors and robots, are often limited by low battery life and finite computational resources, hindering their ability to perform complex tasks. By offloading computation-intensive tasks to Mobile Edge Cloud Computing (MEC) servers at the network’s edge, businesses can achieve real-time data processing and analysis, reducing communication latency, quicker response times, and improved system reliability. This work presents an integrated framework for MEC and Industry 5.0, aimed at enhancing the performance, efficiency, and flexibility of industrial processes. In particular, we propose a joint optimization problem that maximizes computational energy efficiency by optimally allocating resources, such as processing power and computational resources, as well as device association, in the most efficient manner possible. The problem is formulated as nonconvex/nonlinear, which is intractable and poses high complexity. To solve this challenging problem, we first transform and decouple the original optimization problem into a series of subproblems using the block coordinate descent method. Then, we iteratively obtain an efficient solution using convex optimization methods. In addition, our work sheds light on the fundamental trade-off between local computation and partial offloading schemes. The results show that for small data size requirements, the performance is comparable among different schemes. However, as data size increases, our proposed hybrid scheme, which includes a partial offloading scheme, outperforms others, highlighting the effectiveness of the proposed joint optimization scheme.

A decision-making mechanism for task offloading using learning automata and deep learning in mobile edge networks

The development of mobile networks has led to the emergence of challenges such as high delays in storage, computing and traffic management. To deal with these challenges, fifth-generation networks emphasize the use of technologies such as mobile cloud computing and mobile edge computing. Mobile Edge Cloud Computing (MECC) is an emerging distributed computing model that provides access to cloud computing services at the edge of the network and near mobile users. With offloading tasks at the edge of the network instead of transferring them to a remote cloud, MECC can realize flexibility and real-time processing. During computation offloading, the requirements of Internet of Things (IoT) applications may change at different stages, which is ignored in existing works. With this motivation, we propose a task offloading method under dynamic resource requirements during the use of IoT applications, which focuses on the problem of workload fluctuations. The proposed method uses a learning automata-based offload decision-maker to offload requests to the edge layer. An auto-scaling strategy is then developed using a long short-term memory network which can estimate the expected number of future requests. Finally, an Asynchronous Advantage Actor-Critic algorithm as a deep reinforcement learning-based approach decides to scale down or scale up. The effectiveness of the proposed method has been confirmed through extensive experiments using the iFogSim simulator. The numerical results show that the proposed method has better scalability and performance in terms of delay and energy consumption than the existing state-of-the-art methods.

Efficient Revenue-Based MEC Server Deployment and Management in Mobile Edge-Cloud Computing

Efficient Revenue-Based MEC Server Deployment and Management in Mobile Edge-Cloud Computing

Optimizing Training Efficiency and Cost of Hierarchical Federated Learning in Heterogeneous Mobile-Edge Cloud Computing

Federated learning (FL), an emerging distributed machine learning (ML) technique, allows massive embedded devices and a server to work together for training a global ML model without collecting user data on a server. Most existing approaches adopt the traditional centralized FL paradigm with a single server: one is the cloud-centric FL paradigm and the other is the edge-centric FL paradigm. The cloud-centric FL paradigm is able to manage a large-scale FL system across massive user devices with high communication cost, whereas the edge-centric FL paradigm is capable of coordinating a small-scale FL system benefiting from the low communication delay over wireless networks. To fully exploit the advantages of both, in this paper, we develop a distinctive hierarchical FL framework for the promising mobile-edge cloud computing (MECC) system, called HELCHFL, to achieve high-efficiency and low-cost hierarchical FL training. In particular, we formulate the corresponding theoretical foundation for our HELCHFL to ensure hierarchical training performance. Furthermore, to address the inherent communication and user heterogeneity issues of FL training, our HELCHFL develops a utility-driven and heterogeneity-aware heuristic user selection strategy to enhance training performance and reduce training delay. Subsequently, by analyzing and utilizing the slack time in FL training, our HELCHFL introduces a device operating frequency determination approach to reduce training energy cost. Experiments demonstrate that our HELCHFL can enhance the highest accuracy by up to 52.93%, gain the training speedup of up to 483.74%, and obtain up to 45.59% training energy savings compared to state-of-the-art baselines.

Exploration on the Optimal Application of Mobile Cloud Computing in Enterprise Financial Management under 5G Network Architecture

In order to improve the effect of modern enterprise financial management, this paper improves the mobile cloud computing resource scheduling algorithm under the 5G network architecture. Moreover, this paper introduces mobile edge cloud computing, MEC server, into the financial 5G network system model. Taking into account the possible multihop RSU transmission of the calculation result back, this paper expresses the delay composition of the calculation task on the local execution and offloading to the MEC server in the form of a formula and proposes an offloading strategy based on the MEC load status. On this basis, this paper constructs a mobile cloud computing optimization system under the 5G network architecture and designs experiments to evaluate the performance of the system proposed in this paper. From the experimental research, we can see that the enterprise financial management optimization system based on mobile cloud computing under the 5G network architecture proposed in this paper has good effects in the optimization of corporate financial management.

A novel rate control algorithm for low latency video coding base on mobile edge cloud computing

The current low-latency video coding rate control algorithm has similar video sequence structure, low rate control accuracy, long control time, etc., which cannot meet the expectations of modern workers. Based on this, this paper proposes a mobile edge cloud computing-based Low-latency video coding rate control algorithm, optimize the original control algorithm, improve its rate control accuracy, etc. By analyzing the relationship between mobile edge computing and cloud computing, combined with edge computing in the context of cloud computing, this paper proposes a mobile edge cloud computing method and designs the mobile edge cloud computing architecture. Low latency video sequences are obtained using mobile edge cloud computing, and a mobile edge cloud computing model is established to control the update rate parameters of delayed video files. According to the principle of rate control, based on joint rate–distortion theory and frame coding complexity calculation model, the low latency video coding rate control is realized. The experimental results show that the byte data volume of the low-latency video coding sequence of the proposed method is 5653 dB. The rate control accuracy can be as high as 99.64%, and the rate control time is 1.37 s. The proposed method has a high similarity of video sequence structure and high rate control accuracy and can effectively shorten the rate control time of low latency video coding.

Task Offloading Strategy of 6G Heterogeneous Edge-Cloud Computing Model considering Mass Customization Mode Collaborative Manufacturing Environment

With the continuous integration of cloud computing, edge computing, and Internet of things (IoT), various mobile applications will emerge in future 6G network. Driven by real-time response and low energy consumption requirements, mobile edge-cloud computing (MECC) will play an important role to improve user experience and reduce costs. However, due to the complexity of applications, the computing capacity of devices cannot meet the low-latency and low energy consumption requirement. Meanwhile, subject to the limited supplement of power and energy system, the heterogeneous multilayer mobile edge-cloud computing (HetMECC) is proposed to join cloud server, edge server, and terminal devices for data calculation and transmission. By dividing computing tasks, terminal applications can receive reliable and efficient computing services. The simulation results show that the proposed model can achieve the low-latency requirement of data calculation and transmission and improve the robustness of architecture.

Efficient Multi-Player Computation Offloading for VR Edge-Cloud Computing Systems

Virtual reality (VR) is considered to be one of the main use cases of the fifth-generation cellular system (5G). In addition, it has been categorized as one of the ultra-low latency applications in which VR applications require an end-to-end latency of 5 ms. However, the limited battery capacity and computing resources of mobile devices restrict the execution of VR applications on these devices. As a result, mobile edge-cloud computing is considered as a new paradigm to mitigate resource limitations of these devices through computation offloading process with low latency. To this end, this paper introduces an efficient multi-player with multi-task computation offloading model with guaranteed performance in network latency and energy consumption for VR applications based on mobile edge-cloud computing. In addition, this model has been formulated as an integer optimization problem whose objective is to minimize the sum cost of the entire system in terms of network latency and energy consumption. Afterwards, a low-complexity algorithm has been designed which provides comprehensive processes for deriving the optimal computation offloading decision in an efficient manner. Furthermore, we provide a prototype and real implementation for the proposed system using OpenAirInterface software. Finally, simulations have been conducted to validate our proposed model and prove that the network latency and energy consumption can be reduced by up to 26.2%, 27.2% and 10.9%, 12.2% in comparison with edge and cloud execution, respectively.

Device-centric adaptive data stream management and offloading for analytics applications in future internet architectures

Information-Centric Networking (ICN) enables in-network data management and communication between multiple parties by replicating data and activating interactions between decoupled senders and receivers. Existing data management and offloading schemes in ICNs primarily use the transport layer hence it becomes inefficient to actively develop and update the ICN standards because of continuously evolving heterogeneous future internet architectures such as mobile edge cloud computing (MECC) architectures. In this paper, we present an adaptive execution model for mobile data stream mining (MDSM) applications in MECC environments to enable device-centric adaptive data management and offloading. We designed the proposed execution model considering multiple factors of complexity such as volume and velocity of continuously streaming data, the selection of data fusion and data preprocessing methods, the choice of learning models, learning rates, learning modes, mobility, limited computational and memory resources in mobile devices, the high coupling between application components, and dependency over Internet connections. We integrated the proposed execution model with multiple MDSM applications mapping to a real-word use-case for activity detection using MECC as a future network architecture. We thoroughly evaluated the proposed execution model in terms of battery power consumption, memory utilization, makespan, accuracy, and the amount of data reduced during in-network communication. The comparison showed that our proposed adaptive execution model outperformed the static and dynamic execution models which were deployed in the same ICN architecture.

Data-intensive application scheduling on Mobile Edge Cloud Computing

Mobile cloud computing helps to overcome the challenges of mobile computing by allowing mobile devices to migrate computation-intensive and data-intensive tasks to high-performance and scalable computation resources. However, emerging data-intensive applications pose challenges for mobile cloud computing platforms because of high latency, cost and data location issues. To address the challenges of data-intensive applications on mobile cloud platforms, we propose an application offloading optimisation model that schedules application tasks on an integrated computation environment named Mobile Edge Cloud Computing. The optimisation model is formulated as a mixed integer linear programming model, which considers both monetary cost and device energy as optimisation objectives. Moreover, the allocation process considers parameters related to data size and location, data communication costs, context information and network status. To evaluate the performance of the proposed offloading algorithm, we conducted real experiments on the implemented system with a variety of scenarios, such as different deadline and multi-user parameters. Our results demonstrate the ability of the proposed algorithm to generate an optimised resource allocation plan in response to dramatic fluctuations in application data size and network bandwidth. The proposed technique reduced the execution cost of data-intensive applications by an average of 46% and 76% in comparison with particle swarm optimisation (PSO) and full execution on a mobile device only, respectively. In addition, our new technique reduced mobile energy consumption by 35% and 84%, compared to PSO and full execution on a mobile device only, respectively.

HierTrain: Fast Hierarchical Edge AI Learning With Hybrid Parallelism in Mobile-Edge-Cloud Computing

Nowadays, deep neural networks (DNNs) are the core enablers for many emerging edge AI applications. Conventional approaches for training DNNs are generally implemented at central servers or cloud centers for centralized learning, which is typically time-consuming and resource-demanding due to the transmission of a large number of data samples from the edge device to the remote cloud. To overcome these disadvantages, we consider accelerating the learning process of DNNs on the Mobile-Edge-Cloud Computing (MECC) paradigm. In this paper, we propose HierTrain, a hierarchical edge AI learning framework, which efficiently deploys the DNN training task over the hierarchical MECC architecture. We develop a novel hybrid parallelism method, which is the key to HierTrain, to adaptively assign the DNN model layers and the data samples across the three levels of the edge device, edge server and cloud center. We then formulate the problem of scheduling the DNN training tasks at both layer-granularity and sample-granularity. Solving this optimization problem enables us to achieve the minimum training time. We further implement a hardware prototype consisting of an edge device, an edge server and a cloud server, and conduct extensive experiments on it. Experimental results demonstrate that HierTrain can achieve up to $6.9\times $ speedups compared to the cloud-based hierarchical training approach.

Intelligent task prediction and computation offloading based on mobile-edge cloud computing

Edge computing overcomes the high communication delay shortcoming of traditional cloud computing and provides computing services with high reliability and high bandwidth for mobile devices. At present, edge computing has become the forefront and hotspot of mobile-edge cloud computing (MEC) research. However, with the increasing requirements and services of mobile users, offloading strategy of simple edge computing is no longer applicable to MEC architecture. This paper puts forward a new intelligent computation offloading based MEC architecture in combination with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. According to the data size of computation task from mobile users and the performance features of edge computing nodes, a computation offloading and task migration algorithm based on task prediction is proposed. The computation task prediction based on LSTM algorithm, computation offloading strategy for mobile device based on task prediction, and task migration for edge cloud scheduling scheme are used to assist in optimizing the edge computing offloading model. Experiments show that our proposed architecture and algorithm can effectively reduce the total task delay with the increasing data and subtasks.

Multi-User Multi-Task Computation Offloading in Green Mobile Edge Cloud Computing

Mobile Edge Cloud Computing (MECC) has becoming an attractive solution for augmenting the computing and storage capacity of Mobile Devices (MDs) by exploiting the available resources at the network edge. In this work, we consider computation offloading at the mobile edge cloud that is composed of a set of Wireless Devices (WDs), and each WD has an energy harvesting equipment to collect renewable energy from the environment. Moreover, multiple MDs intend to offload their tasks to the mobile edge cloud simultaneously. We first formulate the multi-user multi-task computation offloading problem for green MECC, and use Lyaponuv Optimization Approach to determine the energy harvesting policy: how much energy to be harvested at each WD; and the task offloading schedule: the set of computation offloading requests to be admitted into the mobile edge cloud, the set of WDs assigned to each admitted offloading request, and how much workload to be processed at the assigned WDs. We then prove that the task offloading scheduling problem is NP-hard, and introduce centralized and distributed Greedy Maximal Scheduling algorithms to resolve the problem efficiently. Performance bounds of the proposed schemes are also discussed. Extensive evaluations are conducted to test the performance of the proposed algorithms.

A fault‐tolerant dynamic scheduling method on hierarchical mobile edge cloud computing

AbstractMobile edge cloud computing has been a promising computing paradigm, where mobile users could offload their application workloads to low‐latency local edge cloud resources. However, compared with remote public cloud resources, conventional local edge cloud resources are limited in computation capacity, especially when serve large number of mobile applications. To deal with this problem, we present a hierarchical edge cloud architecture to integrate the local edge clouds and public clouds so as to improve the performance and scalability of scheduling problem for mobile applications. Besides, to achieve a trade‐off between the cost and system delay, a fault‐tolerant dynamic resource scheduling method is proposed to address the scheduling problem in mobile edge cloud computing. The optimization problem could be formulated to minimize the application cost with the user‐defined deadline satisfied. Specifically, firstly, a game‐theoretic scheduling mechanism is adopted for resource provisioning and scheduling for multiprovider mobile applications. Then, a mobility‐aware dynamic scheduling strategy is presented to update the scheduling with the consideration of mobility of mobile users. Moreover, a failure recovery mechanism is proposed to deal with the uncertainties during the execution of mobile applications. Finally, experiments are designed and conducted to validate the effectiveness of our proposal. The experimental results show that our method could achieve a trade‐off between the cost and system delay.

Efficient Resource Allocation for On-Demand Mobile-Edge Cloud Computing

Mobile-edge cloud computing is a new paradigm to provide cloud computing capabilities at the edge of pervasive radio access networks in close proximity to mobile users. Aiming at provisioning flexible on-demand mobile-edge cloud service, in this paper we propose a comprehensive framework consisting of a resource-efficient computation offloading mechanism for users and a joint communication and computation (JCC) resource allocation mechanism for network operator. Specifically, we first study the resource-efficient computation offloading problem for a user, in order to reduce user's resource occupation by determining its optimal communication and computation resource profile with minimum resource occupation and meanwhile satisfying the QoS constraint. We then tackle the critical problem of user admission control for JCC resource allocation, in order to properly select the set of users for resource demand satisfaction. We show the admission control problem is NP-hard, and hence develop an efficient approximation solution of a low complexity by carefully designing the user ranking criteria and rigourously derive its performance guarantee. To prevent the manipulation that some users may untruthfully report their valuations in acquiring mobile-edge cloud service, we further resort to the powerful tool of critical value approach to design truthful pricing scheme for JCC resource allocation. Extensive performance evaluation demonstrates that the proposed schemes can achieve superior performance for on-demand mobile-edge cloud computing.

Dynamic Resource Scheduling in Mobile Edge Cloud with Cloud Radio Access Network

Nowadays, by integrating the cloud radio access network (C-RAN) with the mobile edge cloud computing (MEC) technology, mobile service provider (MSP) can efficiently handle the increasing mobile traffic and enhance the capabilities of mobile devices. But the power consumption has become skyrocketing for MSP and it gravely affects the profit of MSP. Previous work often studied the power consumption in C-RAN and MEC separately while less work had considered the integration of C-RAN with MEC. In this paper, we present an unifying framework for the power-performance tradeoff of MSP by jointly scheduling network resources in C-RAN and computation resources in MEC to maximize the profit of MSP. To achieve this objective, we formulate the resource scheduling issue as a stochastic problem and design a new optimization framework by using an extended Lyapunov technique. Specially, because the standard Lyapunov technique critically assumes that job requests have fixed lengths and can be finished within each decision making interval, it is not suitable for the dynamic situation where the mobile job requests have variable lengths. To solve this problem, we extend the standard Lyapunov technique and design the VariedLen algorithm to make online decisions in consecutive time for job requests with variable lengths. Our proposed algorithm can reach time average profit that is close to the optimum with a diminishing gap (1/V) for the MSP while still maintaining strong system stability and low congestion. With extensive simulations based on a real world trace, we demonstrate the efficacy and optimality of our proposed algorithm.

An Energy-Aware Task Offloading Mechanism in Multiuser Mobile-Edge Cloud Computing

Mobile-edge cloud computing, an emerging and prospective computing paradigm, can facilitate the complex application execution on resource-constrained mobile devices by offloading computation-intensive tasks to the mobile-edge cloud server, which is usually deployed in close proximity to the wireless access point. However, in the multichannel wireless interference environment, the competition of mobile users for communication resources is not conducive to the energy efficiency of task offloading. Therefore, how to make the offloading decision for each mobile user and select its suitable channel become critical issues. In this paper, the problem of the offloading decision is formulated as a 0-1 nonlinear integer programming problem under the constraints of channel interference threshold and the time deadline. Through the classification and priority determination for the mobile devices, a reverse auction-based offloading method is proposed to solve this optimization problem for energy efficiency improvement. The proposed algorithm not only achieves the task offloading decision but also gives the facility of resource allocation. In the energy efficiency performance aspects, simulation results show the superiority of the proposed scheme.