关键词： Data caching   Deep learning   Mobile edge computing   Service offloading  

摘要： The mobile edge computing (MEC) paradigm provides cloud and application services at the "edge"of user networks for providing ubiquitous access to resources. The heterogeneous services cause varying network traffic that sometimes increases delay. In edge-based services, concurrency in data distribution requires caching and offloading features. This article introduces a proactive caching technique with offloading (PCTO) ability by considering the need for parallel user services. The proposed method performs demand-aware offloading to meet the concurrent service dissemination requirements. Network-level caching and its forecast in concurrent service distribution are performed to reduce the response time. The offloading and caching processes are streamlined using deep recurrent learning for the failing service distribution intervals. In the learning process, the machine is trained for prior failures and for pursuing offloading instances. Based on the learning output, the caching level and offloading rate are determined for the queuing services. The performance of the proposed method is verified using the metrics service ratio, response failures, latency, offloading rate, and caching ratio.

关键词： Mobile edge computing   computation offloading   bandwidth assignment  

摘要： Offloading computation based on mobile edge computing paradigms can augment the computational capabilities of resource-scarce mobile devices. However, the capacity limitations of edge servers constrain the performance improvement achieved through computation offloading. In this article, we consider a three-tier computation offloading schema with multiple users, edge servers, and cloud servers. Computation can be offloaded from mobile devices to edge servers or can be further offloaded to remote cloud servers if necessary. Since a number of mobile devices connected to edge servers will share a common wireless communication network, which may contain both uplink and downlink channels, the assignment of bandwidth assignment the channels also constrains the performance improvement of computation offloading. In this paper, the problems of how to determine the offloading strategy and of how to assign the bandwidth are jointly studied and formulated as a programming problem to minimize the average application response time. We analyze the joint problem and further transform it into a piecewise convex programming problem. We propose an efficient algorithm that can find the optimal solution. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our algorithm significantly outperforms previous algorithms. The experimental results also show that the performance of our algorithm is highly robust.

关键词： Small-cell network   mobile edge computing   matching game   association   collaboration  

摘要： Mobile edge computing (MEC) enables computing services at the network edge closer to mobile users (MUs) to reduce network transmission latency and energy consumption. Deploying edge computing servers in small base stations (SBSs), operators make profit by offering MUs with computing services, while MUs purchase services to solve their own computation tasks quickly and energy-efficiently. In this context, it is of particular importance to optimize computing resource allocation and computing service pricing in each SBS, subject to its limited computing and communication resources. To address this issue, we formulate an optimization problem of computing resource management and trading in small-cell networks and tackle this problem using a two-tier matching. Specifically, the first tier targets at the association algorithm between MUs and SBSs to achieve maximum social welfare, and the second tier focuses on the collaboration algorithm among SBSs to make efficient usage of limited computing resources. We further show that the two proposed algorithms contribute to stable matchings and achieve weak Pareto optimality. In particular, we verify that the first algorithm arrives at a competitive equilibrium. Simulation results demonstrate that our proposed algorithms can achieve a better network social welfare than baseline algorithms while retaining a close-optimal performance.

关键词： Cell-free   Mobile edge computing   Non-terrestrial networks   Sixth-generation   Wide-area time-sensitive IoT  

摘要： In the upcoming sixth-generation(6G)era,the demand for constructing a wide-area time-sensitive Internet of Things(IoT)continues to *** conventional cellular technologies are difficult to directly use for wide-area time-sensitive IoT,it is beneficial to use non-terrestrial infrastructures,including satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs).Thus,we can build a non-terrestrial network(NTN)using a cell-free *** by the time-sensitive requirements and uneven distribution of IoT devices,the NTN must be empowered using mobile edge computing(MEC)while providing oasisoriented on-demand coverage for ***,communication and MEC systems are coupled with each other under the influence of a complex propagation environment in the MEC-empowered NTN,which makes it difficult to coordinate the *** this study,we propose a process-oriented framework to design communication and MEC systems in a time-division *** this framework,large-scale channel state information(CSI)is used to characterize the complex propagation environment at an affordable cost,where a nonconvex latency minimization problem is ***,the approximated problem is provided,and it can be decomposed into *** sub-problems are then solved *** simulation results demonstrated the superiority of the proposed process-oriented scheme over other algorithms,implied that the payload deployments of UAVs should be appropriately predesigned to improve the efficiency of using resources,and confirmed that it is advantageous to integrate NTN with MEC for wide-area time-sensitive IoT.

关键词： Mobile edge computing   resource-aware   cloud computing   feature extraction  

摘要： Mobile image recognition services, which provide people with image recognition services through the cameras of mobile devices, are revolutionizing our lives. However, most existing cloud/edge-based approaches suffer from two major limitations, (i) Low recognition accuracy and high network bandwidth pressure, and (ii) Not easy to extract features based on currently available resources of mobile devices. In this paper, we propose a resource-aware feature extraction framework for mobile image recognition services. The proposed framework consists of discriminative feature extraction (DFE) and NestDFE algorithms. The DFE algorithm can generate an extractor E to extract discriminative features from the image data set on the edge server and images on mobile devices. Thus, the proposed framework can achieve higher recognition accuracy and require mobile devices to upload less feature data to the edge server. The NestDFE algorithm generates a single multi-capacity extractor that acts as a series of sub-extractors and enables mobile devices to dynamically select sub-extractors. Experimental results show that the proposed framework improves recognition accuracy by about 23 percent and reduces network traffic by about 76 percent compared with existing approaches.

关键词： Wireless communication   Multi-access edge computing   Simulation   Reinforcement learning   Pricing   Blockchains   Resource management   Asynchronous advantage actor-critic (A3C)   blockchain   deep reinforcement learning   mobile edge computing   pricing   resource allocation  

摘要： When using blockchain in mobile systems, computation intensive mining tasks pose great challenges to the processing capabilities of mobile miner equipment. Mobile edge computing (MEC) is an effective solution to alleviating the problem via task offloading. In the mining process, miners compete for rewards through puzzle solving, where only the miner that first completes the process will be rewarded. Thus, miners may wish to pay higher price and use more communication resources in task offloading and more computation resources in task processing for latency reduction. However, there are risks for the miners not profiting from consuming more resources or paying a higher price, so miners are rational in blockchain systems. In order to maximize the rational total profit of all miners, we use an asynchronous advantage actor-critic (A3C) deep reinforcement learning algorithm to obtain the resource pricing and allocation, considering the stochastic properties of wireless channels, and the prospect theory is employed to strike a good balance between risks and rewards. Numerical results show that our proposed A3C based joint optimization algorithm converges fast and outperforms the baseline algorithms in terms of the total reward.

关键词： Cloud computing   Approximation algorithms   Delays   Mobile computing   Mobile handsets   Prediction algorithms   Servers   Mobile Edge computing   network function virtualization   VNF instance deployment   virtualized service provisioning   approximation and online algorithms   delay-sensitive request admission   utility gain maximization   user mobility   cloudlets or edge-clouds   resource allocations and provisioning in MEC   optimization problems  

摘要： Mobile edge computing (MEC) has emerged as a promising technology to push the cloud frontier to the network edge, provisioning network services in proximity of mobile users. Serving users at edge clouds can reduce service latency, lower operational cost, and improve network resource availability. Along with the MEC technology, network function virtualization (NFV) is another promising technique that implements various network service functions as pieces of software in cloudlets (servers or clusters of servers). Providing virtualized network service for mobile users can improve user service experience, simplify network service deployment, and ease network resource management. However, mobile users move in networks arbitrarily, and different users usually request different services with different resource demands and delay requirements. It thus poses a great challenge to providing reliable and seamless virtualized network services for mobile users in an MEC network while meeting their individual delay requirements, subject to resource capacities on the network. In this paper, we focus on the provisioning of virtualized network function services for mobile users in MEC that takes into account user mobility and service delay requirements. We first formulate two novel optimization problems of user service request admissions with the aims to maximize the accumulative network utility and accumulative network throughput for a given time horizon, respectively. We then devise a constant approximation algorithm for the utility maximization problem. We also develop an online algorithm for the accumulative throughput maximization problem. We finally evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithms through experimental simulations. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms are promising.

关键词： Task analysis   Quality of service   Delays   Edge computing   Servers   Computational modeling   Wireless communication   Mobile edge computing   task offloading   resource allocation   statistical QoS requirement   energy efficiency  

摘要： In mobile edge computing, popular mobile applications, such as augmented reality, usually offload their tasks to resource-rich edge servers. The user experience can be considerably affected when many mobile users compete for the limited communication and computation resources. The key technical challenge in task offloading is to guarantee the Quality of Service (QoS) for such applications. Existing work on task offloading focus on deterministic QoS (delay) guarantee, which means that tasks have to complete before the given deadline with 100 percent. However, it is impractical to impose a deterministic QoS guarantee for tasks due to the high dynamics of the wireless environment when offloading to edge servers. In this paper, we focus on task offloading with statistical QoS guarantee (tasks are allowed to complete before a given deadline with a probability above the given threshold), which can further save more energy by loosing the QoS requirement. Specially, we first propose a statistical computation model and a statistical transmission model to quantify the correlation between the statistical QoS guarantee and task offloading strategy. Then, we formulate the task offloading problem as a mixed integer non-Linear programming problem with the statistical delay constraint. We transform the statistical delay constraint into the constraints on CPU cycle numbers and the delay exponent respectively. We propose an algorithm to provide the statistical QoS guarantee for tasks using convex optimization theory and Gibbs sampling method. Experiment results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the three baselines.

关键词： Mobile edge computing   incentive mechanism   convex optimization   auction mechanism  

摘要： Mobile edge computing (MEC) has become a promising technique to accommodate demands of resource-constrained mobile devices by offloading the task onto edge clouds nearby. However, most existing works only focus on whether to offload or where to offload the task but ignore the motivations of edge clouds to offer service. To stimulate service provisioning by edge clouds, it is essential to design an incentive mechanism that charges mobile devices and rewards edge clouds. In this paper, we first propose an incentive mechanism in a non-competitive environment. We utilize market-based profit maximization pricing model to establish the relationship between the resources provided by edge clouds and the price charged to mobile devices. By solving the optimization problem, we provide a reasonable pricing strategy to not only ensure the profit of resource providers but guarantee the quality of experience (QoE) of mobile devices. Furthermore, we design an online profit maximization multi-round auction (PMMRA) mechanism for the resource trading between edge clouds as sellers and mobile devices as buyers in a competitive environment. The mechanism can effectively determine the price paid by buyers to use the resources provided by sellers and make the corresponding match between edge clouds and mobile devices. Finally, numerical results show that proposed mechanism outperforms other existing algorithms in maximizing the profit of edge clouds.

关键词： Intermittent connectivity   mobile edge computing   task processing time  

摘要： Mobile edge computing (MEC) is a key technology that enables the deployment of applications (or services) at the proximity of mobile users. However, the performance of mobile edge computing is sensitive to the quality and availability of underlying connection links. It is still unclear to what extent intermittent connectivity affects the performance of mobile edge computing. In this paper, we make the first attempt to quantify the influence of intermittent connectivity on mobile edge computing from a theoretical perspective. Specifically, we propose an analytical framework based on discrete-time Markov chain and derive a closed-form expression of the task processing time under different network conditions. Our model can be further extended to account for the case with group task arrivals. We also conduct extensive simulations to examine the accuracy of our proposed analytical models with both synthetic and real-world user mobility traces. The results show that our model can well capture the influence of intermittent connectivity on MEC. Our model sheds important insights into the impact of intermittent connectivity on task processing in MEC, which we believe should be taken into account when designing future MEC systems.