Air-Ground Collaborative Mobile Edge Computing:Architecture,Challenges,and Opportunities

By pushing computation,cache,and network control to the edge,mobile edge computing(MEC)is expected to play a leading role in fifth generation(5G)and future sixth generation(6G).Nevertheless,facing ubiquitous fast-growing computational demands,it is impossible for a single MEC paradigm to effectively support high-quality intelligent services at end user equipments(UEs).To address this issue,we propose an air-ground collaborative MEC(AGCMEC)architecture in this article.The proposed AGCMEC integrates all potentially available MEC servers within air and ground in the envisioned 6G,by a variety of collaborative ways to provide computation services at their best for UEs.Firstly,we introduce the AGC-MEC architecture and elaborate three typical use cases.Then,we discuss four main challenges in the AGC-MEC as well as their potential solutions.Next,we conduct a case study of collaborative service placement for AGC-MEC to validate the effectiveness of the proposed collaborative service placement strategy.Finally,we highlight several potential research directions of the AGC-MEC.

IRS Assisted UAV Communications against Proactive Eavesdropping in Mobile Edge Computing Networks

In this paper,we consider mobile edge computing(MEC)networks against proactive eavesdropping.To maximize the transmission rate,IRS assisted UAV communications are applied.We take the joint design of the trajectory of UAV,the transmitting beamforming of users,and the phase shift matrix of IRS.The original problem is strong non-convex and difficult to solve.We first propose two basic modes of the proactive eavesdropper,and obtain the closed-form solution for the boundary conditions of the two modes.Then we transform the original problem into an equivalent one and propose an alternating optimization(AO)based method to obtain a local optimal solution.The convergence of the algorithm is illustrated by numerical results.Further,we propose a zero forcing(ZF)based method as sub-optimal solution,and the simulation section shows that the proposed two schemes could obtain better performance compared with traditional schemes.

Secure Computation Efficiency Resource Allocation for Massive MIMO-Enabled Mobile Edge Computing Networks

In this article,the secure computation efficiency(SCE)problem is studied in a massive multipleinput multiple-output(mMIMO)-assisted mobile edge computing(MEC)network.We first derive the secure transmission rate based on the mMIMO under imperfect channel state information.Based on this,the SCE maximization problem is formulated by jointly optimizing the local computation frequency,the offloading time,the downloading time,the users and the base station transmit power.Due to its difficulty to directly solve the formulated problem,we first transform the fractional objective function into the subtractive form one via the dinkelbach method.Next,the original problem is transformed into a convex one by applying the successive convex approximation technique,and an iteration algorithm is proposed to obtain the solutions.Finally,the stimulations are conducted to show that the performance of the proposed schemes is superior to that of the other schemes.

Deep Reinforcement Learning-Based Task Offloading and Service Migrating Policies in Service Caching-Assisted Mobile Edge Computing

Emerging mobile edge computing(MEC)is considered a feasible solution for offloading the computation-intensive request tasks generated from mobile wireless equipment(MWE)with limited computational resources and energy.Due to the homogeneity of request tasks from one MWE during a longterm time period,it is vital to predeploy the particular service cachings required by the request tasks at the MEC server.In this paper,we model a service caching-assisted MEC framework that takes into account the constraint on the number of service cachings hosted by each edge server and the migration of request tasks from the current edge server to another edge server with service caching required by tasks.Furthermore,we propose a multiagent deep reinforcement learning-based computation offloading and task migrating decision-making scheme(MBOMS)to minimize the long-term average weighted cost.The proposed MBOMS can learn the near-optimal offloading and migrating decision-making policy by centralized training and decentralized execution.Systematic and comprehensive simulation results reveal that our proposed MBOMS can converge well after training and outperforms the other five baseline algorithms.

Online Learning-Based Offloading Decision and Resource Allocation in Mobile Edge Computing-Enabled Satellite-Terrestrial Networks

Mobile edge computing(MEC)-enabled satellite-terrestrial networks(STNs)can provide Internet of Things(IoT)devices with global computing services.Sometimes,the network state information is uncertain or unknown.To deal with this situation,we investigate online learning-based offloading decision and resource allocation in MEC-enabled STNs in this paper.The problem of minimizing the average sum task completion delay of all IoT devices over all time periods is formulated.We decompose this optimization problem into a task offloading decision problem and a computing resource allocation problem.A joint optimization scheme of offloading decision and resource allocation is then proposed,which consists of a task offloading decision algorithm based on the devices cooperation aided upper confidence bound(UCB)algorithm and a computing resource allocation algorithm based on the Lagrange multiplier method.Simulation results validate that the proposed scheme performs better than other baseline schemes.

Energy Minimization for Heterogenous Traffic Coexistence with Puncturing in Mobile Edge Computing-Based Industrial Internet of Things

Puncturing has been recognized as a promising technology to cope with the coexistence problem of enhanced mobile broadband(eMBB) and ultra-reliable low latency communications(URLLC)traffic. However, the steady performance of eMBB traffic while meeting the requirements of URLLC traffic with puncturing is a major challenge in some realistic scenarios. In this paper, we pay attention to the timely and energy-efficient processing for eMBB traffic in the industrial Internet of Things(IIoT), where mobile edge computing(MEC) is employed for data processing. Specifically, the performance of eMBB traffic and URLLC traffic in a MEC-based IIoT system is ensured by setting the threshold of tolerable delay and outage probability, respectively. Furthermore,considering the limited energy supply, an energy minimization problem of eMBB device is formulated under the above constraints, by jointly optimizing the resource blocks(RBs) punctured by URLLC traffic, data offloading and transmit power of eMBB device. With Markov's inequality, the problem is reformulated by transforming the probabilistic outage constraint into a deterministic constraint. Meanwhile, an iterative energy minimization algorithm(IEMA) is proposed.Simulation results demonstrate that our algorithm has a significant reduction in the energy consumption for eMBB device and achieves a better overall effect compared to several benchmarks.

UAV-assisted cooperative offloading energy efficiency system for mobile edge computing

Reliable communication and intensive computing power cannot be provided effectively by temporary hot spots in disaster areas and complex terrain ground infrastructure.Mitigating this has greatly developed the application and integration of UAV and Mobile Edge Computing(MEC)to the Internet of Things(loT).However,problems such as multi-user and huge data flow in large areas,which contradict the reality that a single UAV is constrained by limited computing power,still exist.Due to allowing UAV collaboration to accomplish complex tasks,cooperative task offloading between multiple UAVs must meet the interdependence of tasks and realize parallel processing,which reduces the computing power consumption and endurance pressure of terminals.Considering the computing requirements of the user terminal,delay constraint of a computing task,energy constraint,and safe distance of UAV,we constructed a UAV-Assisted cooperative offloading energy efficiency system for mobile edge computing to minimize user terminal energy consumption.However,the resulting optimization problem is originally nonconvex and thus,difficult to solve optimally.To tackle this problem,we developed an energy efficiency optimization algorithm using Block Coordinate Descent(BCD)that decomposes the problem into three convex subproblems.Furthermore,we jointly optimized the number of local computing tasks,number of computing offloaded tasks,trajectories of UAV,and offloading matching relationship between multi-UAVs and multiuser terminals.Simulation results show that the proposed approach is suitable for different channel conditions and significantly saves the user terminal energy consumption compared with other benchmark schemes.

Energy Efficiency Maximization in Mobile Edge Computing Networks via IRS assisted UAV Communications

In this paper,we investigate the energy efficiency maximization for mobile edge computing(MEC)in intelligent reflecting surface(IRS)assisted unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)communications.In particular,UAVcan collect the computing tasks of the terrestrial users and transmit the results back to them after computing.We jointly optimize the users’transmitted beamforming and uploading ratios,the phase shift matrix of IRS,and the UAV trajectory to improve the energy efficiency.The formulated optimization problem is highly non-convex and difficult to be solved directly.Therefore,we decompose the original problem into three sub-problems.We first propose the successive convex approximation(SCA)based method to design the beamforming of the users and the phase shift matrix of IRS,and apply the Lagrange dual method to obtain a closed-form expression of the uploading ratios.For the trajectory optimization,we propose a block coordinate descent(BCD)based method to obtain a local optimal solution.Finally,we propose the alternating optimization(AO)based overall algorithmand analyzed its complexity to be equivalent or lower than existing algorithms.Simulation results show the superiority of the proposedmethod compared with existing schemes in energy efficiency.

Computing Resource Allocation for Blockchain-Based Mobile Edge Computing

Users and edge servers are not fullymutually trusted inmobile edge computing(MEC),and hence blockchain can be introduced to provide trustableMEC.In blockchain-basedMEC,each edge server functions as a node in bothMEC and blockchain,processing users’tasks and then uploading the task related information to the blockchain.That is,each edge server runs both users’offloaded tasks and blockchain tasks simultaneously.Note that there is a trade-off between the resource allocation for MEC and blockchain tasks.Therefore,the allocation of the resources of edge servers to the blockchain and theMEC is crucial for the processing delay of blockchain-based MEC.Most of the existing research tackles the problem of resource allocation in either blockchain or MEC,which leads to unfavorable performance of the blockchain-based MEC system.In this paper,we study how to allocate the computing resources of edge servers to the MEC and blockchain tasks with the aimtominimize the total systemprocessing delay.For the problem,we propose a computing resource Allocation algorithmfor Blockchain-based MEC(ABM)which utilizes the Slater’s condition,Karush-Kuhn-Tucker(KKT)conditions,partial derivatives of the Lagrangian function and subgradient projection method to obtain the solution.Simulation results show that ABM converges and effectively reduces the processing delay of blockchain-based MEC.

Age of Information Based User Scheduling and Data Assignment in Multi-User Mobile Edge Computing Networks:An Online Algorithm

This paper investigates the age of information(AoI)-based multi-user mobile edge computing(MEC)network with partial offloading mode.The weighted sum AoI(WSA)is first analyzed and derived,and then a WSA minimization problem is formulated by jointly optimizing the user scheduling and data assignment.Due to the non-analytic expression of the WSA w.r.t.the optimization variables and the unknowability of future network information,the problem cannot be solved with known solution methods.Therefore,an online Joint Partial Offloading and User Scheduling Optimization(JPOUSO)algorithm is proposed by transforming the original problem into a single-slot data assignment subproblem and a single-slot user scheduling sub-problem and solving the two sub-problems separately.We analyze the computational complexity of the presented JPO-USO algorithm,which is of O(N),with N being the number of users.Simulation results show that the proposed JPO-USO algorithm is able to achieve better AoI performance compared with various baseline methods.It is shown that both the user’s data assignment and the user’s AoI should be jointly taken into account to decrease the system WSA when scheduling users.

Task offloading mechanism based on federated reinforcement learning in mobile edge computing

With the arrival of 5G,latency-sensitive applications are becoming increasingly diverse.Mobile Edge Computing(MEC)technology has the characteristics of high bandwidth,low latency and low energy consumption,and has attracted much attention among researchers.To improve the Quality of Service(QoS),this study focuses on computation offloading in MEC.We consider the QoS from the perspective of computational cost,dimensional disaster,user privacy and catastrophic forgetting of new users.The QoS model is established based on the delay and energy consumption and is based on DDQN and a Federated Learning(FL)adaptive task offloading algorithm in MEC.The proposed algorithm combines the QoS model and deep reinforcement learning algorithm to obtain an optimal offloading policy according to the local link and node state information in the channel coherence time to address the problem of time-varying transmission channels and reduce the computing energy consumption and task processing delay.To solve the problems of privacy and catastrophic forgetting,we use FL to make distributed use of multiple users’data to obtain the decision model,protect data privacy and improve the model universality.In the process of FL iteration,the communication delay of individual devices is too large,which affects the overall delay cost.Therefore,we adopt a communication delay optimization algorithm based on the unary outlier detection mechanism to reduce the communication delay of FL.The simulation results indicate that compared with existing schemes,the proposed method significantly reduces the computation cost on a device and improves the QoS when handling complex tasks.

Dynamic Task Offloading for Digital Twin-Empowered Mobile Edge Computing via Deep Reinforcement Learning

Limited by battery and computing re-sources,the computing-intensive tasks generated by Internet of Things(IoT)devices cannot be processed all by themselves.Mobile edge computing(MEC)is a suitable solution for this problem,and the gener-ated tasks can be offloaded from IoT devices to MEC.In this paper,we study the problem of dynamic task offloading for digital twin-empowered MEC.Digital twin techniques are applied to provide information of environment and share the training data of agent de-ployed on IoT devices.We formulate the task offload-ing problem with the goal of maximizing the energy efficiency and the workload balance among the ESs.Then,we reformulate the problem as an MDP problem and design DRL-based energy efficient task offloading(DEETO)algorithm to solve it.Comparative experi-ments are carried out which show the superiority of our DEETO algorithm in improving energy efficiency and balancing the workload.

Computation Rate Maximization in Multi-User Cooperation-Assisted Wireless-Powered Mobile Edge Computing with OFDMA

In the era of Internet of Things(Io T),mobile edge computing(MEC)and wireless power transfer(WPT)provide a prominent solution for computation-intensive applications to enhance computation capability and achieve sustainable energy supply.A wireless-powered mobile edge computing(WPMEC)system consisting of a hybrid access point(HAP)combined with MEC servers and many users is considered in this paper.In particular,a novel multiuser cooperation scheme based on orthogonal frequency division multiple access(OFDMA)is provided to improve the computation performance,where users can split the computation tasks into various parts for local computing,offloading to corresponding helper,and HAP for remote execution respectively with the aid of helper.Specifically,we aim at maximizing the weighted sum computation rate(WSCR)by optimizing time assignment,computation-task allocation,and transmission power at the same time while keeping energy neutrality in mind.We transform the original non-convex optimization problem to a convex optimization problem and then obtain a semi-closed form expression of the optimal solution by considering the convex optimization techniques.Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed multi-user cooperationassisted WPMEC scheme greatly improves the WSCR of all users than the existing schemes.In addition,OFDMA protocol increases the fairness and decreases delay among the users when compared to TDMA protocol.

Adaptive delay-energy balanced partial offloading strategy in Mobile Edge Computing networks

Mobile Edge Computing(MEC)-based computation offloading is a promising application paradigm for serving large numbers of users with various delay and energy requirements.In this paper,we propose a flexible MECbased requirement-adaptive partial offloading model to accommodate each user's specific preference regarding delay and energy consumption.To address the dimensional differences between time and energy,we introduce two normalized parameters and then derive the computational overhead of processing tasks.Different from existing works,this paper considers practical variations in the user request patterns,and exploits a flexible partial offloading mode to minimize computation overheads subject to tolerable delay,task workload and power constraints.Since the resulting problem is non-convex,we decouple it into two convex subproblems and present an iterative algorithm to obtain a feasible offloading solution.Numerical experiments show that our proposed scheme achieves a significant improvement in computation overheads compared with existing schemes.

Task Offloading and Resource Allocation in IoT Based Mobile Edge Computing Using Deep Learning

Recently,computation offloading has become an effective method for overcoming the constraint of a mobile device(MD)using computationintensivemobile and offloading delay-sensitive application tasks to the remote cloud-based data center.Smart city benefitted from offloading to edge point.Consider a mobile edge computing(MEC)network in multiple regions.They comprise N MDs and many access points,in which everyMDhasM independent real-time tasks.This study designs a new Task Offloading and Resource Allocation in IoT-based MEC using Deep Learning with Seagull Optimization(TORA-DLSGO)algorithm.The proposed TORA-DLSGO technique addresses the resource management issue in the MEC server,which enables an optimum offloading decision to minimize the system cost.In addition,an objective function is derived based on minimizing energy consumption subject to the latency requirements and restricted resources.The TORA-DLSGO technique uses the deep belief network(DBN)model for optimum offloading decision-making.Finally,the SGO algorithm is used for the parameter tuning of the DBN model.The simulation results exemplify that the TORA-DLSGO technique outperformed the existing model in reducing client overhead in the MEC systems with a maximum reward of 0.8967.

Multi-Objective Optimization for NOMA-Based Mobile Edge Computing Offloading by Maximizing System Utility

Mobile Edge Computing(MEC)is a technology for the fifth-generation(5G)wireless communications to enable User Equipment(UE)to offload tasks to servers deployed at the edge of network.However,taking both delay and energy consumption into consideration in the 5G MEC system is usually complex and contradictory.Non-orthogonal multiple access(NOMA)enable more UEs to offload their computing tasks to MEC servers using the same spectrum resources to enhance the spectrum efficiency for 5G,which makes the problem even more complex in the NOMA-MEC system.In this work,a system utility maximization model is present to NOMA-MEC system,and two optimization algorithms based on Newton method and greedy algorithm respectively are proposed to jointly optimize the computing resource allocation,SIC order,transmission time slot allocation,which can easily achieve a better trade-off between the delay and energy consumption.The simulation results prove that the proposed method is effective for NOMA-MEC systems.

Intelligent Traffic Scheduling for Mobile Edge Computing in IoT via Deep Learning

Nowadays,with the widespread application of the Internet of Things(IoT),mobile devices are renovating our lives.The data generated by mobile devices has reached a massive level.The traditional centralized processing is not suitable for processing the data due to limited computing power and transmission load.Mobile Edge Computing(MEC)has been proposed to solve these problems.Because of limited computation ability and battery capacity,tasks can be executed in the MEC server.However,how to schedule those tasks becomes a challenge,and is the main topic of this piece.In this paper,we design an efficient intelligent algorithm to jointly optimize energy cost and computing resource allocation in MEC.In view of the advantages of deep learning,we propose a Deep Learning-Based Traffic Scheduling Approach(DLTSA).We translate the scheduling problem into a classification problem.Evaluation demonstrates that our DLTSA approach can reduce energy cost and have better performance compared to traditional scheduling algorithms.

Modelling Mobile-X Architecture for Offloading in Mobile Edge Computing

Mobile Edge Computing(MEC)assists clouds to handle enormous tasks from mobile devices in close proximity.The edge servers are not allocated efficiently according to the dynamic nature of the network.It leads to processing delay,and the tasks are dropped due to time limitations.The researchersfind it difficult and complex to determine the offloading decision because of uncertain load dynamic condition over the edge nodes.The challenge relies on the offload-ing decision on selection of edge nodes for offloading in a centralized manner.This study focuses on minimizing task-processing time while simultaneously increasing the success rate of service provided by edge servers.Initially,a task-offloading problem needs to be formulated based on the communication and pro-cessing.Then offloading decision problem is solved by deep analysis on taskflow in the network and feedback from the devices on edge services.The significance of the model is improved with the modelling of Deep Mobile-X architecture and bi-directional Long Short Term Memory(b-LSTM).The simulation is done in the Edgecloudsim environment,and the outcomes show the significance of the proposed idea.The processing time of the anticipated model is 6.6 s.The following perfor-mance metrics,improved server utilization,the ratio of the dropped task,and number of offloading tasks are evaluated and compared with existing learning approaches.The proposed model shows a better trade-off compared to existing approaches.

A Hybrid Heuristic Service Caching and Task Offloading Method for Mobile Edge Computing

Computing-intensive and latency-sensitive user requests pose significant challenges to traditional cloud computing.In response to these challenges,mobile edge computing(MEC)has emerged as a new paradigm that extends the computational,caching,and communication capabilities of cloud computing.By caching certain services on edge nodes,computational support can be provided for requests that are offloaded to the edges.However,previous studies on task offloading have generally not considered the impact of caching mechanisms and the cache space occupied by services.This oversight can lead to problems,such as high delays in task executions and invalidation of offloading decisions.To optimize task response time and ensure the availability of task offloading decisions,we investigate a task offloading method that considers caching mechanism.First,we incorporate the cache information of MEC into the model of task offloading and reduce the task offloading problem as a mixed integer nonlinear programming(MINLP)problem.Then,we propose an integer particle swarm optimization and improved genetic algorithm(IPSO_IGA)to solve the MINLP.IPSO_IGA exploits the evolutionary framework of particle swarm optimization.And it uses a crossover operator to update the positions of particles and an improved mutation operator to maintain the diversity of particles.Finally,extensive simulation experiments are conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm.The experimental results demonstrate that IPSO_IGA can save 20%to 82%of the task completion time,compared with state-of-theart and classical algorithms.Moreover,IPSO_IGA is suitable for scenarios with complex network structures and computing-intensive tasks.

Vertical Federated Learning Based on Consortium Blockchain for Data Sharing in Mobile Edge Computing

The data in Mobile Edge Computing(MEC)contains tremendousmarket value,and data sharing canmaximize the usefulness of the data.However,certain data is quite sensitive,and sharing it directly may violate privacy.Vertical Federated Learning(VFL)is a secure distributed machine learning framework that completes joint model training by passing encryptedmodel parameters rather than raw data,so there is no data privacy leakage during the training process.Therefore,the VFL can build a bridge between data demander and owner to realize data sharing while protecting data privacy.Typically,the VFL requires a third party for key distribution and decryption of training results.In this article,we employ the consortium blockchain instead of the traditional third party and design a VFL architecture based on the consortium blockchain for data sharing in MEC.More specifically,we propose a V-Raft consensus algorithm based on Verifiable Random Functions(VRFs),which is a variant of the Raft.The VRaft is able to elect leader quickly and stably to assist data demander and owner to complete data sharing by VFL.Moreover,we apply secret sharing todistribute the private key to avoid the situationwhere the training result cannot be decrypted if the leader crashes.Finally,we analyzed the performance of the V-Raft and carried out simulation experiments,and the results show that compared with Raft,the V-Raft has higher efficiency and better scalability.