Mobile Edge Cloud Research Articles

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

Kaizen: A Street Smart Low Latency-Aware Resource Choreography Scheme for Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) and Non-DAO Based Application Execution Over Blockchain and MEC Empowered 6 G Network

AbstractDecentralized autonomous organization (DAO)-based applications can revolutionize traditional centralized decision-making procedures and services by enabling scalable, decentralized, autonomous, and democratized decision-making processes. Unlike traditional applications, DAO-based decentralized applications use Ethereum blockchain-based smart contract programs to execute policies or make automated decisions. To that end, 6 G technologies can improve the latency and reliability of many existing blockchain-based DAOs. Previous research did not investigate the execution of DAO and non-DAO-based applications, as well as an adaptive resource choreography scheme, while accounting for various 6 G technologies, blockchain, and mobile-edge cloud (MEC). To prevail over the previous shortcomings, this article supplies a street smart multi-platform coordination, application scheduling, and low-latency-aware resource choreography scheme for both DAO and non-DAO-based application execution over blockchain and MEC-enabled 6 G networks by taking heterogenous DAO and non-DAO application count, application requirements, physical worker, virtual worker, and communication resource status into account. The results verified that the proposed kaizen scheme delivers at least 11.26% app work completion delay gain, 7.2% user energy overhead gain, 6.55% user economic charge gain, and 21% service provider profit than the compared schemes.

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.

A Hyper Heuristic Algorithm for Efficient Resource Allocation in 5G Mobile Edge Clouds

Emergence of intelligent devices and mobile edge clouds (MECs) in 5G networks has exponentially increased the number of applications that demand low latency services. However, their resource heterogeneity, limited computing power and storage including congestion in the ultra-dense 5G network, make the real-time services challenging. Existing works are limited either by addressing application delay requirements or computational load balancing. This paper develops an efficient resource allocation framework for selecting optimal servers and routing paths in the 5G MEC network by jointly optimizing latency, computational, and network load variances. First, we formulate the above multi-objective problem as a mixed-integer non-linear programming problem. Further, we adopt a hyper-heuristic (AWSH) algorithm by leveraging the combined powers of <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">A</b> nt Colony, <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">W</b> hale, <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">S</b> ine-Cosine, and <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">H</b> enry Gas Solubility Optimization algorithms. The proposed AWSH algorithm works at the higher level, and it explores and exploits one of the three lower-level heuristics in each iteration to efficiently capture the dynamically varying environmental parameters and thereby address the resource allocation problem. Their collaborative effort helps to achieve a global optimum in allocating resources of 5G MEC network. Simulation results prove the superiority of the AWSH algorithm compared to state-of-the-art solutions in terms of service latency, successful offloading ratio, and load balancing.

Minimization of Task Completion Time in Wireless Powered Mobile Edge-Cloud Computing Networks

Minimization of Task Completion Time in Wireless Powered Mobile Edge-Cloud Computing Networks

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.

Dynamic offloading strategy for computational energy efficiency of wireless power transfer based MEC networks in industry 5.0

Wireless power transfer (WPT) has emerged as a promising solution for delivering services to low-power Internet of Things (IoT) devices in a demand-driven manner. In this work, we consider the Wireless power-enabled Hybrid Mobile Edge Cloud (WPHMEC) network, which utilizes a dynamic offloading strategy (partial and binary) to maximize computational efficiency while minimizing device energy consumption. To address this challenge, we formulate a convex optimization problem to maximize the number of computational bits and minimize the energy consumption of the IIoT devices in the WPT-based MEC system for Industry 5.0 applications. To achieve this goal, we employ a reformulation approach based on block coordinate descent (BCD) to formulate an optimization problem that addresses the nonconvexity of the problem and propose a solution approach using the Karush–Kuhn–Tucker (KKT) conditions. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme, extensive simulations are carried out using the Matlab software to evaluate the system’s performance and components. The results demonstrate that optimal resource allocation maximizes energy efficiency and enhances computational resource utilization, making WPHMEEC an ideal choice for addressing the evolving demands of Industry 5.0 applications.

UNION: Fault-tolerant Cooperative Computing in Opportunistic Mobile Edge Cloud

Opportunistic Mobile Edge Cloud in which opportunistically connected mobile devices run in a cooperative way to augment the capability of a single device has become a timely and essential topic due to its widespread prospect under resource-constrained scenarios (e.g., disaster rescue). Because of the mobility of devices and the uncertainty of environments, it is inevitable that failures occur among the mobile nodes. Being different from existing studies that mainly focus on either data offloading or computing offloading among mobile devices in an ideal environment, we concentrate on how to guarantee the reliability of the task execution with the consideration of both data offloading and computing offloading under opportunistically connected mobile edge cloud. To this end, an optimization of mobile task offloading when considering reliability is formulated. Then, we propose a probabilistic model for task offloading and a reliability model for task execution, which estimates the probability of successful execution for a specific opportunistic path and describes the dynamic reliability of the task execution. Based on these models, a heuristic algorithm UNION (Fa u lt-Tolera n t Cooperat i ve C o mputi n g) is proposed to solve this NP-hard problem. Theoretical analysis shows that the complexity of UNION is 𝒪(|ℐ| 2 +|𝒩|) with guaranteeing the reliability of 0.99. Also, extensive experiments on real-world traces validate the superiority of the proposed algorithm UNION over existing typical strategies.

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.

Approximate Q-learning-based (AQL) network slicing in mobile edge-cloud for delay-sensitive services

Approximate Q-learning-based (AQL) network slicing in mobile edge-cloud for delay-sensitive services

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

Collaborative Virtual 3D Object Modeling for Mobile Augmented Reality Streaming Services Over 5G Networks

This paper presents a collaborative virtual 3D object modeling system for mobile augmented reality (AR) streaming services over 5G networks. The objective of the proposed system is to provide AR streaming services with low latency and high virtual object quality by effectively leveraging mobile edge cloud (MEC) and device-to-device (D2D) communication. MEC is utilized to perform computation-intensive 3D object modeling, such as virtual object slicing and mesh simplification, with abundant computing and storage resources. D2D communication is also utilized to reduce transmission delay by sharing virtual objects of interest among adjacent users. To achieve this goal, we propose a part-segment quality selection algorithm that can control the quality of each part segment and the transmission source by considering the users network condition. In the proposed system, all elements in the AR cloud, MEC, and mobile device are technically integrated to work together seamlessly. Finally, the proposed system is fully implemented using well-known open-source frameworks, including WebGL and AR.js. The system was then examined in real wireless network environments. The experimental results demonstrate the performance of the proposed system. The proposed system outperforms conventional systems in terms of service latency and visual 3D object quality.

Near-Optimal and Collaborative Service Caching in Mobile Edge Clouds

In this paper, we study the problem of service caching in an MEC network under a service market with multiple network service providers competing for both computation and bandwidth resources in terms of Virtual Machines (VMs) in the MEC network. We first propose an Integer Linear Program (ILP) solution and a randomized rounding algorithm, for the problem without VM sharing among different network service providers. We then devise a distributed and stable game-theoretical mechanism for the problem with VM sharing among network service providers, with the aim to minimize the social cost of all network service providers, through introducing a novel cost sharing model and a coalition formation game. We also analyze the performance guarantee of the proposed mechanism, Strong Price of Anarchy (SPoA). We thirdly consider the cost- and delay-sensitive service caching problem with temporal VM sharing, and propose a mechanism with provable SPoA. We finally evaluate the performance through extensive simulations and a real world test-bed implementation. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms outperform existing approaches by achieving at least 40% lower social cost via service caching and resource sharing among different network service providers.

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.

Multi-Agent Deep Q-Network Based Dynamic Controller Placement for Node Variable Software-Defined Mobile Edge-Cloud Computing Networks

Software-defined networks (SDN) can use the control plane to manage heterogeneous devices efficiently, improve network resource utilization, and optimize Mobile Edge-Cloud Computing Networks (MECCN) network performance through decisions based on global information. However, network traffic in MECCNs can change over time and affect the performance of the SDN control plane. Moreover, the MECCN network may need to temporarily add network access points when the network load is excessive, and it is difficult for the control plane to form effective management of temporary nodes. This paper investigates the dynamic controller placement problem (CPP) in SDN-enabled Mobile Edge-Cloud Computing Networks (SD-MECCN) to enable the control plane to continuously and efficiently serve the network under changing network load and network access points. We consider the deployment of a two-layer structure with a control plane and construct the CPP based on this control plane. Subsequently, we solve this problem based on multi-agent DQN (MADQN), in which multiple agents cooperate to solve CPP and adjust the number of controllers according to the network load. The experimental results show that the proposed dynamic controller deployment algorithm based on MADQN for node-variable networks in this paper can achieve better performance in terms of delay, load difference, and control reliability than the Louvain-based algorithm, single-agent DQN-based algorithm, and MADQN- (without node-variable networks consideration) based algorithm.

SAP: Subchain-Aware NFV Service Placement in Mobile Edge Cloud

Existing Network Function Virtualization (NFV) service placements that reuse already deployed network functions either reuse an entire Service Function Chain (SFC) or only individual network functions while ignoring the chain configuration cost for configuring the SFC traffic steering and ignoring the reliability of the network functions. Also, the Mobile Edge Cloud (MEC) frameworks that are required to implement an NFV service placement should ideally seamlessly cooperate with the various existing NFV Management and Orchestration (MANO) frameworks. However, the existing MEC frameworks lack multi-MANO support. We formulate the novel Subchain-Aware NFV service Placement (SAP) optimization model that accounts for the configuration cost for stitching together reused network functions to an SFC and strives to reuse existing subchains of consecutive network functions (with already deployed SFC traffic steering), while accounting for the recovery cost of network functions with limited reliability. We develop Tabu-SAP, a Tabu search approach to solve the SAP optimization problem. Furthermore, we introduce the novel Automated Provisioning framework for MEC (APMEC) with open-source OpenStack implementation to enable the deployment of Tabu-SAP in real networks; APMEC supports multiple MANOs through a loose coupling MANO-MEC design. Our Tabu-SAP evaluations indicate an around eightfold increase of the number of supported SFCs compared to the state-of-the-art reuse of individual network functions, while substantially reducing the total cost, which includes the chain configuration cost. Also, for long SFCs of seven or more network functions, the Tabu-SAP total cost is less than 10% higher than the optimal solution (which requires over ten times longer execution time).

Joint Optimization Across Timescales: Resource Placement and Task Dispatching in Edge Clouds

The proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) data and innovative mobile services has promoted an increasing need for low-latency access to resources such as data and computing services. Mobile edge computing has become an effective computing paradigm to meet the requirement for low-latency access by placing resources and dispatching tasks at the edge clouds near mobile users. The key challenge of such solution is how to efficiently place resources and dispatch tasks in the edge clouds to meet the QoS of mobile users or maximize the platform's utility. In this paper, we study the joint optimization problem of resource placement and task dispatching in mobile edge clouds across multiple timescales under the dynamic status of edge servers. We first propose a two-stage iterative algorithm to solve the joint optimization problem in different timescales, which can handle the varieties among the dynamic of edge resources and/or tasks. We then propose a reinforcement learning (RL) based algorithm which leverages the learning capability of Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG) technique to tackle the network variation and dynamic as well. The results from our trace-driven simulations demonstrate that both proposed approaches can effectively place resources and dispatching tasks across two timescales to maximize the total utility of all scheduled tasks.