A novel data size-aware offloading technique for resource provisioning in mobile cloud computing

Mobile device users are involved in social networking, gaming, learning, and even some office work, so the end users expect mobile devices with high-response computing capacities, storage, and high battery power consumption. The data-intensive applications, such as text search, online gaming, and face recognition usage, have tremendously increased. With such high complex applications, there are many issues in mobile devices, namely, fast battery draining, limited power, low storage capacity, and increased energy consumption. The novelty of this work is to strike a balance between time and energy consumption of mobile devices while using data-intensive applications by finding the optimal offloading decisions. This paper proposes a novel efficient Data Size-Aware Offloading Model (DSAOM) for data-intensive applications and to predict the appropriate resource provider for dynamic resource allocation in mobile cloud computing. Based on the data size, the tasks are separated and gradually allocated to the appropriate resource providers for execution. The task is placed into the appropriate resource provider by considering the availability services in the fog nodes or the cloud. The tasks are split into smaller portions for execution in the neighbor fog nodes. To execute the task in the remote side, the offloading decision is made by using the min-cut algorithm by considering the monetary cost of the mobile device. This proposed system achieves low-latency time 13.2% and low response time 14.1% and minimizes 24% of the energy consumption over the existing model. Finally, according to experimental findings, this framework efficiently lowers energy use and improves performance for data-intensive demanding application activities, and the task offloading strategy is effective for intensive offloading requests.     

Energy‐aware dynamic task offloading and collective task execution in mobile cloud computing

There is a good opportunity for enlightening the services of the mobile devices by introducing computational offloading using cloud technology. Offloading is a process for managing the complexity of the mobile environment by migrating computational load to the cloud. The mobile devices oblige the quick response for the offloading requests; it is dependent on network connectivity. The cloud services take long set‐up time irrespective of network connectivity. In this paper, new system architecture for the dynamic task offloading in the mobile cloud environment is proposed. The architecture includes the offloading algorithm that concentrates on energy consumption of the tasks both in the local and remote environment. The proposed algorithm formulates a collective task execution model for minimizing the energy consumption. The architecture concentrates on the network model by considering the task completion time in three different network scenarios. The experimental results show the efficiency of the suggested architecture in reducing the energy consumption and completion time of the tasks.     

A genetic‐based decision algorithm for multisite computation offloading in mobile cloud computing

Mobile cloud computing is a promising approach to improve the mobile device's efficiency in terms of energy consumption and execution time. In this context, mobile devices can offload the computation‐intensive parts of their applications to powerful cloud servers. However, they should decide what computation‐intensive parts are appropriate for offloading to be beneficial instead of local execution on the mobile device. Moreover, in the real world, different types of clouds/servers with heterogeneous processing speeds are available that should be considered for offloading. Because making offloading decision in multisite context is an NP‐complete, obtaining an optimal solution is time consuming. Hence, we use a near optimal decision algorithm to find the best‐possible partitioning for offloading to multisite clouds/servers. We use a genetic algorithm and adjust it for multisite offloading problem. Also, genetic operators are modified to reduce the ineffective solutions and hence obtain the best‐possible solutions in a reasonable time. We evaluated the efficiency of the proposed method using graphs of real mobile applications in simulation experiments. The evaluation results demonstrate that our proposal outperforms other counterparts in terms of energy consumption, execution time, and weighted cost model.     

A web service‐based internet of things framework for mobile resource augmentation

Mobile devices are the primary communication tool in day to day life of the people. Nowadays, the enhancement of the mobile applications namely IoTApps and their exploitation in various domains like healthcare monitoring, home automation, smart farming, smart grid, and smart city are crucial. Though mobile devices are providing seamless user experience anywhere, anytime, and anyplace, their restricted resources such as limited battery capacity, constrained processor speed, inadequate storage, and memory are hindering the development of resource‐intensive mobile applications and internet of things (IoT)‐based mobile applications. To solve this resource constraint problem, a web service‐based IoT framework is proposed by exploiting fuzzy logic methodologies. This framework augments the resources of mobile devices by offloading the resource‐intensive subtasks from mobile devices to the service providing entities like Arduino, Raspberry PI controller, edge cloud, and distant cloud. Based on the recommended framework, an online Repository of Instructional Talk (RIoTalk) is successfully implemented to store and analyze the classroom lectures given by faculty in our study site. Simulation results show that there is a significant reduction in energy consumption, execution time, bandwidth utilization, and latency. The proposed research work significantly increases the resources of mobile devices by offloading the resource‐intensive subtasks from the mobile device to the service provider computing entities thereby providing Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) to mobile users.     

Energy-efficient task offloading strategy in mobile edge computing for resource-intensive mobile applications

Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) has been considered a promising solution that can address capacity and performance challenges in legacy systems such as Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC). In particular, such challenges include intolerable delay, congestion in the core network, insufficient Quality of Experience (QoE), high cost of resource utility, such as energy and bandwidth. The aforementioned challenges originate from limited resources in mobile devices, the multi-hop connection between end-users and the cloud, high pressure from computation-intensive and delay-critical applications. Considering the limited resource setting at the MEC, improving the efficiency of task offloading in terms of both energy and delay in MEC applications is an important and urgent problem to be solved. In this paper, the key objective is to propose a task offloading scheme that minimizes the overall energy consumption along with satisfying capacity and delay requirements. Thus, we propose a MEC-assisted energy-efficient task offloading scheme that leverages the cooperative MEC framework. To achieve energy efficiency, we propose a novel hybrid approach established based on Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Grey Wolf Optimizer (GWO) to solve the optimization problem. The proposed approach considers efficient resource allocation such as sub-carriers, power, and bandwidth for offloading to guarantee minimum energy consumption. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed strategy is computational-efficient compared to benchmark methods. Moreover, it improves energy utilization, energy gain, response delay, and offloading utility.     

Efficient Computation Offloading Decision in Mobile Cloud Computing over 5G Network

Due to the significant advancement of Smartphone technology, the applications targeted for these devices are getting more and more complex and demanding of high power and resources. Mobile cloud computing (MCC) allows the Smart phones to perform these highly demanding tasks with the help of powerful cloud servers. However, to decide whether a given part of an application is cost-effective to execute in local mobile device or in the cloud server is a difficult problem in MCC. It is due to the trade-off between saving energy consumption while maintaining the strict latency requirements of applications. Currently, 5th generation mobile network (5G) is getting much attention, which can support increased network capacity, high data rate and low latency and can pave the way for solving the computation offloading problem in MCC. In this paper, we design an intelligent computation offloading system that takes tradeoff decisions for code offloading from a mobile device to cloud server over the 5G network. We develop a metric for tradeoff decision making that can maximize energy saving while maintain strict latency requirements of user applications in the 5G system. We evaluate the performances of the proposed system in a test-bed implementation, and the results show that it outperforms the state-of-the-art methods in terms of accuracy, computation and energy saving.     

A Distributed and Elastic Application Processing Model for Mobile Cloud Computing

The latest developments in mobile computing technology have increased the computing capabilities of smart mobile devices (SMDs). However, SMDs are still constrained by low bandwidth, processing potential, storage capacity, and battery lifetime. To overcome these problems, the rich resources and powerful computational cloud is tapped for enabling intensive applications on SMDs. In Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC), application processing services of computational clouds are leveraged for alleviating resource limitations in SMDs. The particular deficiency of distributed architecture and runtime partitioning of the elastic mobile application are the challenging aspects of current offloading models. To address these issues of traditional models for computational offloading in MCC, this paper proposes a novel distributed and elastic applications processing (DEAP) model for intensive applications in MCC. We present an analytical model to evaluate the proposed DEAP model, and test a prototype application in the real MCC environment to demonstrate the usefulness of DEAP model. Computational offloading using the DEAP model minimizes resources utilization on SMD in the distributed processing of intensive mobile applications. Evaluation indicates a reduction of 74.6% in the overhead of runtime application partitioning and a 66.6% reduction in the CPU utilization for the execution of the application on SMD.

     

Optimal Task Assignment in Mobile Cloud Computing by Queue Based Ant-Bee Algorithm

Wireless Personal Communications - Mobile cloud computing (MCC) broadens the mobile devices capability by offloading tasks to the ‘cloud’. Hence, offloading numerous tasks...     

Q-learning-based task offloading strategy for satellite edge computing

In this paper, we study the task offloading optimization problem in satellite edge computing environments to reduce the whole communication latency and energy consumption so as to enhance the offloading success rate. A three-tier machine learning framework consisting of collaborative edge devices, edge data centers, and cloud data centers has been proposed to ensure an efficient task execution. To accomplish this goal, we also propose a Q-learning-based reinforcement learning offloading strategy in which both the time-sensitive constraints and data requirements of the computation-intensive tasks are taken into account. It enables various types of tasks to select the most suitable satellite nodes for the computing deployment. Simulation results show that our algorithm outperforms other baseline algorithms in terms of latency, energy consumption, and successful execution efficiency.     

基于非正交多址接入的移动边缘计算安全节能联合资源分配

为提高基于非正交多址接入(NOMA)的移动边缘计算(MEC)系统中计算任务部分卸载时的安全性,该文在存在窃听者情况下研究MEC网络的物理层安全,采用保密中断概率来衡量计算卸载的保密性能,考虑发射功率约束、本地任务计算约束和保密中断概率约束,同时引入能耗权重因子以平衡传输能耗和计算能耗,最终实现系统能耗加权和最小。在满足两个用户优先级情况下,为降低系统开销,提出一种联合任务卸载和资源分配机制,通过基于二分搜索的迭代优化算法寻求问题变换后的最优解,并获得最优的任务卸载和功率分配。仿真结果表明,所提算法可有效降低系统能耗。     

基于拉格朗日的计算迁移能耗优化策略

随着移动网络技术的发展和智能终端的普及应用,移动边缘计算已成为云计算的一个重要应用。计算迁移策略已成为移动边缘计算服务的关键问题之一。以移动终端总的计算时间和移动终端能耗最小化为目标,将移动终端的计算迁移资源划分问题建模为一个凸优化问题,运用拉格朗日乘子法进行求解,提出基于阈值的迁移优化策略模型。仿真实验表明,本迁移优化策略模型能有效平衡本地计算和迁移计算之间的关系,为移动边缘计算中执行计算密集型应用提供保障。     

Research on Cloudlet selection strategy for data streaming applications in mobile cloud environment

Most existing Cloudlet selection strategies only used the resources of one Cloudlet to compute offloading,which couldn’t obtain the superior performance improvement for mobile data streaming application with many parallel components.To address this issue,a Cloudlet selection strategy based on chemical reaction optimization algorithm was proposed.The strategy aims to reduce application’s completion time and energy consumption of mobile device.When the dependencies among application’s components was satisfied,the strategy can take full advantage of the computing capability of multi-cloudlet to execute the parallel components of mobile data stream application simultaneously.Therefore the strategy can improve the execution efficiency and reduce the energy consumption of mobile device.The simulation results reveal that the proposed strategy can achieves 18.3% on average performance improvement than POCSS strategy does in multi-Cloudlet environment.     

Joint offloading strategy based on quantum particle swarm optimization for MEC-enabled vehicular networks

With the development of the mobile communication technology, a wide variety of envisioned intelligent transportation systems have emerged and put forward more stringent requirements for vehicular communications. Most of computation-intensive and power-hungry applications result in a large amount of energy consumption and computation costs, which bring great challenges to the on-board system. It is necessary to exploit traffic offloading and scheduling in vehicular networks to ensure the Quality of Experience (QoE). In this paper, a joint offloading strategy based on quantum particle swarm optimization for the Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) enabled vehicular networks is presented. To minimize the delay cost and energy consumption, a task execution optimization model is formulated to assign the task to the available service nodes, which includes the service vehicles and the nearby Road Side Units (RSUs). For the task offloading process via Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) communication, a vehicle selection algorithm is introduced to obtain an optimal offloading decision sequence. Next, an improved quantum particle swarm optimization algorithm for joint offloading is proposed to optimize the task delay and energy consumption. To maintain the diversity of the population, the crossover operator is introduced to exchange information among individuals. Besides, the crossover probability is defined to improve the search ability and convergence speed of the algorithm. Meanwhile, an adaptive shrinkage expansion factor is designed to improve the local search accuracy in the later iterations. Simulation results show that the proposed joint offloading strategy can effectively reduce the system overhead and the task completion delay under different system parameters.     

Joint computation offloading and task caching for multi-user and multi-task MEC systems: reinforcement learning-based algorithms

Computation offloading at mobile edge computing (MEC) servers can mitigate the resource limitation and reduce the communication latency for mobile devices. Thereby, in this study, we proposed an offloading model for a multi-user MEC system with multi-task. In addition, a new caching concept is introduced for the computation tasks, where the application program and related code for the completed tasks are cached at the edge server. Furthermore, an efficient model of task offloading and caching integration is formulated as a nonlinear problem whose goal is to reduce the total overhead of time and energy. However, solving these types of problems is computationally prohibitive, especially for large-scale of mobile users. Thus, an equivalent form of reinforcement learning is created where the state spaces are defined based on all possible solutions and the actions are defined on the basis of movement between the different states. Afterwards, two effective Q-learning and Deep-Q-Network-based algorithms are proposed to derive the near-optimal solution for this problem. Finally, experimental evaluations verify that our proposed model can substantially minimize the mobile devices’ overhead by deploying computation offloading and task caching strategy reasonably.

     

车联网中基于NOMA-MEC的卸载策略研究

随着车联网(IoV)的迅猛发展,请求进行任务卸载的汽车终端用户也逐渐增长,而基于移动边缘计算(MEC)的通信网络能够有效地解决任务卸载在上行传输时延较高的挑战,但是该网络模型同时也面临着信道资源不足的问题。该文引入的非正交多址(NOMA)技术相较于正交多址(OMA)能够在相同的信道资源条件下为更多的用户提供任务卸载,同时考虑到任务卸载过程中多方面的影响因子,提出了混合NOMA-MEC卸载策略。该文设计了一种基于深度学习网络(DQN)的博弈算法,帮助车辆用户进行信道选择,并通过神经网络多次迭代学习,为用户提供最优的功率分配策略。仿真结果表明,该文所提出的混合NOMA-MEC卸载策略能够有效地优化多用户卸载的时延以及能耗,最大限度保证用户效益。     

车联网中基于NOMA-MEC的卸载策略研究

随着车联网(IoV)的迅猛发展,请求进行任务卸载的汽车终端用户也逐渐增长,而基于移动边缘计算(MEC)的通信网络能够有效地解决任务卸载在上行传输时延较高的挑战,但是该网络模型同时也面临着信道资源不足的问题。该文引入的非正交多址(NOMA)技术相较于正交多址(OMA)能够在相同的信道资源条件下为更多的用户提供任务卸载,同时考虑到任务卸载过程中多方面的影响因子,提出了混合NOMA-MEC卸载策略。该文设计了一种基于深度学习网络(DQN)的博弈算法,帮助车辆用户进行信道选择,并通过神经网络多次迭代学习,为用户提供最优的功率分配策略。仿真结果表明,该文所提出的混合NOMA-MEC卸载策略能够有效地优化多用户卸载的时延以及能耗,最大限度保证用户效益。     

Users' experience matter: Delay sensitivity-aware computation offloading in mobile edge computing

As a promising computing paradigm, Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) provides communication and computing capability at the edge of the network to address the concerns of massive computation requirements, constrained battery capacity and limited bandwidth of the Internet of Things (IoT) systems. Most existing works on mobile edge task ignores the delay sensitivities, which may lead to the degraded utility of computation offloading and dissatisfied users. In this paper, we study the delay sensitivity-aware computation offloading by jointly considering both user's tolerance towards delay of task execution and the network status under computation and communication constraints. Specifically, we use a specific multi-user and multi-server MEC system to define the latency sensitivity of task offloading based on the analysis of delay distribution of task categories. Then, we propose a scoring mechanism to evaluate the sensitivity-dependent utility of task execution and devise a Centralized Iterative Redirection Offloading (CIRO) algorithm to collect all information in the MEC system. By starting with an initial offloading strategy, the CIRO algorithm enables IoT devices to cooperate and iteratively redirect task offloading decisions to optimize the offloading strategy until it converges. Extensive simulation results show that our method can significantly improve the utility of computation offloading in MEC systems and has lower time complexity than existing algorithms.     

Mobile ad hoc cloud: A survey

The unabated flurry of research activities to augment various mobile devices in terms of compute‐intensive task execution by leveraging heterogeneous resources of available devices in the local vicinity has created a new research domain called mobile ad hoc cloud (MAC) or mobile cloud. It is a new type of mobile cloud computing (MCC). MAC is deemed to be a candidate blueprint for future compute‐intensive applications with the aim of delivering high functionalities and rich impressive experience to mobile users. However, MAC is yet in its infancy, and a comprehensive survey of the domain is still lacking. In this paper, we survey the state‐of‐the‐art research efforts carried out in the MAC domain. We analyze several problems inhibiting the adoption of MAC and review corresponding solutions by devising a taxonomy. Moreover, MAC roots are analyzed and taxonomized as architectural components, applications, objectives, characteristics, execution model, scheduling type, formation technologies, and node types. The similarities and differences among existing proposed solutions by highlighting the advantages and disadvantages are also investigated. We also compare the literature based on objectives. Furthermore, our study advocates that the problems stem from the intrinsic characteristics of MAC by identifying several new principles. Lastly, several open research challenges such as incentives, heterogeneity‐ware task allocation, mobility, minimal data exchange, and security and privacy are presented as future research directions. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Deep reinforcement learning-based joint task offloading and bandwidth allocation for multi-user mobile edge computing

The rapid growth of mobile internet services has yielded a variety of computation-intensive applications such as virtual/augmented reality. Mobile Edge Computing (MEC), which enables mobile terminals to offload computation tasks to servers located at the edge of the cellular networks, has been considered as an efficient approach to relieve the heavy computational burdens and realize an efficient computation offloading. Driven by the consequent requirement for proper resource allocations for computation offloading via MEC, in this paper, we propose a Deep-Q Network (DQN) based task offloading and resource allocation algorithm for the MEC. Specifically, we consider a MEC system in which every mobile terminal has multiple tasks offloaded to the edge server and design a joint task offloading decision and bandwidth allocation optimization to minimize the overall offloading cost in terms of energy cost, computation cost, and delay cost. Although the proposed optimization problem is a mixed integer nonlinear programming in nature, we exploit an emerging DQN technique to solve it. Extensive numerical results show that our proposed DQN-based approach can achieve the near-optimal performance.     

Joint optimization of energy and delay for computation offloading in cloudlet-assisted mobile cloud computing

Wireless Networks - In the mobile cloud computing (MCC), although offloading requests to the distant central cloud or nearby cloudlet can reduce energy consumption at the mobile devices (MDs), it...