An expert system for hybrid edge to cloud computational offloading in heterogeneous MEC–MCC environments

Computation offloading services provide required computing resources for vehicles with computation-intensive tasks. Past computation offloading research mainly focused on mobile edge computing (MEC) or cloud computing, separately. This paper presents a collaborative approach based on MEC and cloud computing that offloads services to automobiles in vehicular networks. A cloud-MEC collaborative computation offloading problem is formulated through jointly optimizing computation offloading decision and computation resource allocation. Since the problem is non-convex and NP-hard, we propose a collaborative computation offloading and resource allocation optimization (CCORAO) scheme, and design a distributed computation offloading and resource allocation algorithm for CCORAO scheme that achieves the optimal solution. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can effectively improve the system utility and computation time, especially for the scenario where the MEC servers fail to meet demands due to insufficient computation resources.

Deep Neural Networks meet computation offloading in mobile edge networks: Applications, taxonomy, and open issues

Mobile applications are advancing toward higher network and compute requirements, which are similar to the requirements of server applications. Users prefer to perform their tasks on the go from mobile devices instead of stationary desktop and server systems. Modern mobile applications limit mobile battery times as charging is lost quickly due to high processing and data demands. Resources other than energy are also limited in mobile devices (memory, CPU millions of instructions per second, etc.).Mobile edge computing (MEC) technologies facilitate resource-scarcemobile devices to enhance their capabilities and execute data/computeintensive applications while collaborating with resource-rich network servers to enable ubiquitous computing. On the other hand, mobile cloud computing provides higher resources for applications that have low response requirements (noninteractive applications). Bothmobile edge computing andmobile cloud computing enable technologies for Internet of Things (IoT), smart grids, and e-health applications.

Mobile cloud computing (MCC) integrates cloud computing (CC) into mobile networks, prolonging the battery life of the mobile users (MUs). However, this mode may cause significant execution delay. To address the delay issue, a new mode known as mobile edge computing (MEC) has been proposed. MEC provides computing and storage service for the edge of network, which enables MUs to execute applications efficiently and meet the delay requirements. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey of the MEC research from the perspective of service adoption and provision. We first describe the overview of MEC, including the definition, architecture, and service of MEC. After that we review the existing MUs‐oriented service adoption of MEC, i.e., offloading. More specifically, the study on offloading is divided into two key taxonomies: computation offloading and data offloading. In addition, each of them is further divided into single MU offloading scheme and multi‐MU offloading scheme. Then we survey edge server‐ (ES‐) oriented service provision, including technical indicators, ES placement, and resource allocation. In addition, other issues like applications on MEC and open issues are investigated. Finally, we conclude the paper.

As the technology is developing with a huge rate, the functionality of smartphone is also getting higher. But the smartphones have some resource constraints like processing power, battery capacity, limited bandwidth for connecting to the Internet, etc. Therefore, to improve the performance of smartphone in terms of processing power, battery and memory, the technology namely, augmented execution is the best solution in the mobile cloud computing (MCC) scenario. Mobile cloud computing works as the combination of mobile computing and cloud computing. Augmented execution alleviates the problem of resource scarcity of smartphone. To get the benefits from the resource-abundant clouds, massive computation intensive tasks are partitioned and migrated to the cloud side for the execution. After executing the task at the cloud side, the results are sent back to the smartphone. This method is called as the computation offloading. The given survey paper focuses on the partitioning techniques in mobile cloud computing.

Despite their progress and improvements, mobile devices are still regarded as restricted computer devices. Users are growing more discerning, expecting to be able to run computationally intensive applications on their smartphones or tablets. As a result, Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) integrates mobile computing and Cloud Computing in order to use offloading techniques to increase the capabilities of mobile devices. Although offloading programmes to the cloud might improve mobile device performance, it can also increase processing delay. Inevitably, the quality of user service (QoS) suffers as a result, particularly for specific applications (especially workflow applications). To address the problem of network latency, a new paradigm known as mobile edge computing (MEC) has been developed, which may be thought of as a subset of MCC. We also see deployment of Cloudlets, which are a form of edge server, to minimize latency and energy usage by offloading applications to the cloud, resulting in an efficient and cost-effective architecture as well as various decision-making techniques for offloading. And so, a literature survey regarding this will be presented which focuses on various methods of offloading and its decision-making techniques.

Contemporary vehicular applications pose stringent latency and computation requirements for the autonomous vehicles (AVs). These requirements are hard to be met by the vehicles due to limited computation capabilities. One of the significant solutions is computation offloading in which delay-sensitive and complex applications are handed over to the network. However, computation offloading at the core network incurs excessive architecture-induced delay which is inefficient for applications with tight latency, data rate and computation requirements. Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) is one of the key enablers for 5G that offers computation resources at the edge of the network resulting in ultra-low latency, powerful computation, larger coverage area and context-awareness. European Telecommunication Standards Institute (ETSI) foresees vehicular communication as a use case for MEC. Therefore, we propose application-aware hierarchical offloading scheme (HOS) for MEC-enabled distributed AV architecture. The proposed architecture divides the network into three layers according to application requirements resulting in quick-response and efficient network that meets the application requirements. To decide the computation layer, each application is treated independently in accordance with the complexity, data rate and computation requirements. Thus, every application is handled at appropriate layer so as to meet its latency and computation requirements. Further, we also analyze the impact of task size on computation offloading decision. Finally, we compare our proposed architecture with local computation and distant placed mobile cloud computing (MCC) architecture.

Mobile cloud computing (MCC) is a technique or model, in which mobile applications are built, powered and hosted using cloud computing technology. It refers to the availability of Cloud Computing services in a mobile environment and it is the combination of the heterogeneous fields like mobile phone device, cloud computing and wireless networks. Of all that has been written about cloud computing, precious little attention has been paid to authentication in the cloud. In this paper we have designed a new effective security model for mobile cloud Database as a Service (DBaaS). A user can change his/her password, whenever demanded. Furthermore, security analysis realizes the feasibility of the proposed model for DBaaS and achieves efficiency. We also proposed an efficient authentication scheme to solve the authentication problem in MCC. The proposed solution which we have provided is based mainly on improved Needham-Schroeder’s protocol to prove the users’ identity to determine if this user is authorized or not. The results showed that this scheme is very strong and difficult to break it.

Mobile cloud computing (MCC) is the availability of cloud computing services in a mobile environment. By providing optimal services for mobile users, MCC incorporates the elements of mobile networks and cloud computing. In mobile cloud computing, all the data and complicated computing modules can be processed in clouds, and mobile devices do not need a powerful configuration like CPU speed, memory capacity, etc. However, the mobile devices are facing up with many struggles in their resources (e.g., battery life, storage, and bandwidth) and communications (e.g., privacy, mobility, and security). These challenges have a significant effect on the improvement of service qualities. In this paper, a literature survey on the MCC and security issues in MCC has presented.

Mobile cloud computing is a new computing paradigm to integrate cloud computing technology into the mobile environment. It takes full advantages of cloud computing with great potential to transform a large part of the IT industry. The objectives of mobile cloud computing are to meet user demand, efficiently utilize a pool of resources, including mobile network, storage, and computation resources, and optimize energy on mobile devices. Here, the authors review the current mobile cloud computing technologies, highlight the main issues and challenges for the future development, and focus on resource management. Then, combining the current agent architectures and resource optimization strategies, they present an agent-based resource management to deal with multiple data and computation intensive applications of user demand. The chapter offers a promising solution of selecting the best service provider and efficiently utilizing mobile network resources given the user's request constraint.

Many advancements are being made in vehicular networks, such as self-driving, dynamic route scheduling, real-time traffic condition monitoring, and on-board infotainment services. However, these services require high computation power and precision and can be met using mobile edge computing (MEC) mechanisms for vehicular networks. MEC operates through the edge servers available at the roadside, also known as roadside units (RSU). MEC is very useful for vehicular networks because it has extremely low latency and supports operations that require near-real-time access to rapidly changing data. This paper proposes an efficient computational offloading, smart division of tasks, and cooperation among RSUs to increase service performance and decrease the delay in a vehicular network via MEC. The computational delay is further reduced by parallel processing. In the division of tasks, each task is divided into two sub-components which are fed to a deep neural network (DNN) for training. Consequently, this reduces the overall time delay and overhead. We also adopt an efficient routing policy to deliver the results through the shortest path to improve service reliability. The offloading, computing, division, and routing policies are formulated, and a model-based DNN approach is used to obtain an optimal solution. Simulation results prove that our proposed approach is suitable in a dynamic environment. We also compare our results with the existing state-of-the-art, showing that our proposed approach outperforms the existing schemes.

Mobile edge computing (MEC) emerged as a promising network paradigm that provides computation, storage and networking features within the edge of the pervasive mobile radio access network. This paper jointly considers resource allocation and computation offloading problem in device-to-device (D2D)-assisted and non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA)- based MEC systems, where each computing user (CU) is allowed to execute its task in one of the three ways, i.e., local computing, MEC offloading or D2D offloading. The original problem is formulated as an overall cost minimization problem, which proves to be NP-Hard, making it intractable to solve optimally. So, we transform the original problem into two sub-problems, i.e., resource allocation sub-problem and computation offloading sub-problem and propose two heuristic algorithms to obtain the sub-optimal solutions of both sub-problems. Finally, simulation results demonstrate the efficiency of proposed scheme when compared with related scheme.

Broad adoption of resource-constrained devices for medical use has additional limitations in terms of execution of delay-sensitive medical applications. As one of the solutions, new ways of computational offloading could be developed and integrated. The recently emerged Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) and Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) paradigms attempt to address this problem by offloading tasks to a the resource-rich server. In the context of the availability of eHealth services for all patients, independently of the location, the implementation of MEC and MCC could help ensure a high availability of medical services. Remote medical examination, robotic surgery, and cardiac telemetry require efficient computing solutions. This work discusses three alternative computing models: local computing, MEC, and MCC. We have designed a Matlab-based tool to calculate and compare the response time and energy efficiency. We show that local computing demands 48 times more power than MEC/MCC with increasing packet workload. On the other hand, the throughput of MEC/MCC highly depends on the parameters of the communication channel. Finding an optimal trade-off between the response time and energy consumption is an important research question that could not be solved without investigating the system's bottlenecks.

Mobile edge computing (MEC) can effectively overcome the shortcomings of high-latency in mobile cloud computing (MCC) by deploying the cloud resources, e.g., storage and computational capability, to the edge. However, the limited computation capability of the MEC restricts the scalability of offloading. Therefore, the basic requirements of the MEC system are to explore effective offloading decisions and resource allocation methods. To address it, we develop a collaborative computing system composed of local computing (mobile device), MEC (edge cloud) and MCC (central cloud). Based on the proposed collaborative computing system, we design a novel Q-learning based computation offloading (QLCOF) policy to achieve the optimal resource allocation and offloading scheme by prescheduling the computation side for each task from a global perspective. Specifically, we first model the offloading decision process as a Markov decision process (MDP) and design a state loss function (STLF) to measure the quality of experience (QoE). After that, we define the cumulation of STLFs as the system loss function (SYLF) and formulate an SYLF minimization problem. Due to the difficulty to directly solve the formulated problem, we decompose it into multiple subproblems and preferentially optimize the transmission power and computation frequency of the edge cloud by the quasi-convex bisection and polynomial analysis method, respectively. Based on the precalculated offline transmission power and edge cloud computation frequency, we develop a Q-learning based offloading (QLOF) scheme to minimize the SYLF by optimizing offloading decisions. Finally, the numeral results show that the proposed QLOF scheme effectively reduces the SYLF under different parameters.

A Cloud-RAN based end-to-end computation offloading in Mobile Edge Computing