Revenue-optimal task scheduling and resource management for IoT batch jobs in mobile edge computing

These days, more and more web are converting into mobile devices such as the internet of things (IoT). These applications are distributed in nature and installed on mobile and servers to achieve many business goals. With this motivation, mobile edge computing (MEC) is an evolving paradigm that reduces the energy consumption of mobile devices through the offload process. However, currently all studies only concentrated on mobile energy and widely overlooked the energy usage of the computing node resources and application deadlines during offloading and scheduling in the MEC network. This research suggests a new mobile edge cloud (mob-cloud) architecture that minimises the nodes energy and meets the deadline requirements of applications. This research formulates this problem as the convex optimisation problem under linear integer programming. The mob-cloud consists of different types of virtual machines which are implementing at the edge computing. This study introduces a novel deadline and energy-efficient task scheduling (DEETS) algorithm framework consisting of task sequencing, resource searching, and mobility-aware scheduling. Furthermore, DEETS keeps tradeoff performances between resource energy usage and task deadline. Simulation results show that the proposed DEETS outperformed all contemporary methods regarding energy usage and deadlines of applications by 50%.

Propelled by recent advances in Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) and the Internet of Things (IoT), the digital twin technique has been envisioned as a de-facto driving force to bridge the virtual and physical worlds through creating digital portrayals of physical objects. In virtue of the flourishing of edge intelligence and abundant IoT data, data-driven modelling facilitates the implementation and maintenance of digital twins, where simulations of physical objects are usually performed based on Deep Neural Networks (DNNs). A significant advantage of adopting digital twins is to enable decisive prediction on the behaviours of objects in near future without waiting for that really happen. To provide accurate predictions, it is vital to keep each digital twin synchronized with its physical object in real-time. However, it is challenging to maintain the real-time synchronization between a digital twin and its physical object due to the dynamics of physical objects and sensing data drift over time, i.e., the live data from a physical object diverge from the model training data of its digital twin. To address this critical issue, continual learning is a promising solution to retrain models of digital twins incrementally. In this paper, we investigate digital twin synchronization issues via continual learning in an MEC environment, with the aim to maximize the total utility gain, i.e., the enhanced model accuracy. We study two novel optimization problems: the static digital twin synchronization problem per time slot and the dynamic digital twin synchronization problem for a finite time horizon. We first formulate an Integer Linear Program (ILP) solution for the static digital twin synchronization problem when the problem size is small; otherwise, we develop a randomized approximation algorithm at the expense of bounded resource violations for it. We also devise a deterministic approximation algorithm with guaranteed performance for a special case of the static digital twin synchronization problem. We thirdly consider the dynamic digital twin synchronization problem by proposing an efficient online algorithm for it. Finally, we evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithms for continuous digital twin synchronization through simulations. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithms are promising, outperforming counterpart benchmarks by no less than 13.2%, in terms of the total utility gain.

The real-time communication requirement of the Internet of Things (IoT) applications promotes the convergence of IoT and Mobile Edge Computing (MEC). The MEC paradigm greatly shortens the IoT service delay by leveraging cloudlets (edge servers) of MEC in the proximity of IoT devices. Considering limited computing and storage resources in an MEC network, it is challenging to provide efficient IoT-enabled service provisioning in such a network. In this article, we study the service home identification problem of service provisioning for multi-source IoT applications in an MEC network, by identifying a service home (cloudlet) of each multi-source IoT application for its data processing, querying and storage. Each multi-source IoT application consists of multiple sources located at different geographical locations and each source uploads its data stream via a gateway (its nearby access point) to the MEC network and the uploaded data then is aggregated with the stream data of the other sources of the IoT application at the service home. We here focus on two novel service home identification problems: the service operational cost minimization problem with the aim to minimize the total service operational cost by admitting as many multi-source IoT applications as possible, and the online throughput maximization problem with the aim to maximize the number of multi-source IoT application requests admitted. We first show that both the problems are NP-hard. We then formulate an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) solution to the service operational cost minimization problem, and propose a randomized algorithm with high probability and a deterministic approximation algorithm respectively, at moderate resource capacity violations. We third develop an efficient heuristic algorithm for the problem without any resource violation. Furthermore, we deal with the online throughput maximization problem under an assumption that multi-source IoT application requests arrive one by one without the knowledge of future arrivals, for which we formulate an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) solution to its offline version, followed by devising an online algorithm with competitive ratio. We finally evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithms through experimental simulations. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms are promising, and outperform their comparison counterparts.

Cybercrime is significantly growing as the development of internet technology. To mitigate this issue, the law enforcement adopts network surveillance technology to track a suspect and derive the online profile. However, the traditional network surveillance using the single-device tracking method can only acquire part of a suspect’s online activities. With the emergence of different types of devices (e.g., personal computers, mobile phones, and smart wearable devices) in the mobile edge computing (MEC) environment, one suspect can employ multiple devices to launch a cybercrime. In this paper, we investigate a novel cross-device tracking approach which is able to correlate one suspect’s different devices so as to help the law enforcement monitor a suspect’s online activities more comprehensively. Our approach is based on the network traffic analysis of instant messaging (IM) applications, which are typical commercial service providers (CSPs) in the MEC environment. We notice a new habit of using IM applications, that is, one individual logs in the same account on multiple devices. This habit brings about devices’ receiving sync messages, which can be utilized to correlate devices. We choose five popular apps (i.e., WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, QQ, and Skype) to prove our approach’s effectiveness. The experimental results show that our approach can identify IM messages with high F1-scores (e.g., QQ’s PC message is 0.966, and QQ’s phone message is 0.924) and achieve an average correlating accuracy of 89.58% of five apps in an 8-people experiment, with the fastest correlation speed achieved in 100 s.

As a key technology in the 5G era, mobile edge computing (MEC) has developed rapidly in recent years. MEC aims to reduce the service delay of mobile users, while alleviating the processing pressure on the core network. MEC can be regarded as an extension of cloud computing on the user side, which can deploy edge servers and bring computing resources closer to mobile users, and provide more efficient interactions. However, due to the user's dynamic mobility, the distance between the user and the edge server will change dynamically, which may cause fluctuations in Quality of Service. Therefore, when a mobile user moves in the MEC environment, certain approaches are needed to schedule services deployed on the edge server to ensure the user experience. In this article, we model service scheduling in MEC scenarios and propose a delay‐aware and mobility‐aware service management approach based on concise probabilistic methods. This approach has low computational complexity and can effectively reduce service delay and migration costs. Furthermore, we conduct experiments by utilizing multiple realistic datasets and use iFogSim to evaluate the performance of the algorithm. The results show that our proposed approach can optimize the performance on service delay, with 8%–20% improvement and reduce the migration cost by more than 75% compared with baselines during the rush hours.

With the changes in the era of science and technology, the emergence of 5G technology makes a communication speed leap, and the delay is also getting shorter and shorter. At present, the computing power of computing equipment is also steadily improving. As one of its key technologies, mobile edge computing (MEC) is becoming more and more important. Here, we introduce MEC task scheduling and device collaboration algorithms based on deep learning. Aiming at the multi-task joint optimization scheduling strategy microtearing mode to minimize the total service cost of multiple tasks, we establish a theoretical optimization model of multi-task joint scheduling and use the model to design a multi-task cloud collaborative optimization scheduling algorithm based on Livepeer Token rules. We propose a deep-learning device collaboration algorithm based on alternating direction multiplier. The sub differential algorithm and the improved conjugate gradient method are designed to solve the sub problem respectively. This paper simulates the proposed deep-learning task scheduling algorithm and device collaboration algorithm. The simulation results show that, in the task scheduling algorithm, the proposed algorithm reduces the cost of completing the task, but in the total task time, this algorithm has a certain gap compared with other algorithms. In the equipment collaboration algorithm, with the increase of the n value, the algorithm converges in a certain iteration increment; in terms of algorithm convergence, the algorithm needs 142 iterations at most to achieve convergence, and the fastest speed only needs 17 iterations. In the experiment based on real data sets, the proposed algorithm is also better than the other two algorithms. From these results, we can see that the proposed algorithm has good convergence, stability, and scalability, and it has excellent performance in task scheduling and device collaboration of MEC.

Mobile edge computing (MEC), which is regarded as a promising paradigm, is proposed to provide smart cities that are supported by the Internet of Things (IoT) with low processing latency at the edge of the network, by offloading latency-critical tasks from MDs to edge service providers (ESPs). In this paper, we study the interaction between ESPs and MDs by formulating a Stackelberg game model, to optimize the strategies of computation offloading and resource allocation of the MDs, and the prices and investment spending on the privacy level of ESPs. Additionally, the social effect of MDs on privacy concerns is incorporated to study the impacts on the payoffs of players. We utilize distributed Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM) algorithm to address the Stackelberg equilibrium problem in a distributed manner. Finally, numerical results illustrate that our proposed scheme can jointly achieve the maximum profits of ESPs and utilities of MDs.

Delay-aware concurrent data management method for IoT collaborative mobile edge computing environment

In the mobile edge computing (MEC) environment, the edge caching can provide the timely data response service for the intelligent scenarios. However, due to the limited storage capacity of edge nodes and the malicious node behavior, the question of how to select the cached contents and realize the decentralized security data caching faces challenges. In this paper, a blockchain-based decentralized and proactive caching strategy is proposed in an MEC environment to address this problem. The novelty is that the blockchain was adopted in an MEC environment with a proactive caching strategy based on node utility, and the corresponding optimization problem was built. The blockchain was adopted to build a secure and reliable service environment. The employed methodology is that the optimal caching strategy was achieved based on the linear relaxation technology and the interior point method. Additionally, in a content caching system, there is a trade-off between cache space and node utility, and the caching strategy was proposed to solve this problem. There was also a trade-off between the consensus process delay of blockchain and the caching latency of content. An offline consensus authentication method was adopted to reduce the influence of the consensus process delay on the content caching. The key finding was that the proposed algorithm can reduce latency and can ensure the security data caching in an IoT environment. Finally, the simulation experiment showed that the proposed algorithm can achieve up to 49.32%, 43.11%, and 34.85% improvements on the cache hit rate, the average content response latency, and the average system utility, respectively, compared to the random content caching algorithm, and it achieved up to 9.67%, 8.11%, and 5.95% increases, successively, compared to the greedy content caching algorithm.

This paper explores integrating biomechanics data and bio-inspired models to enhance efficiency in business administration, focusing on task scheduling, resource allocation, and workflow optimization. Biomechanics, traditionally applied in fields such as healthcare and sports, is used to analyze human movement and physical strain in business processes, particularly in physically demanding environments like manufacturing and logistics. Bio-inspired models, such as Genetic Algorithms (GA) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), are applied to solve complex optimization problems in resource management and task scheduling. The study presents three case studies to demonstrate the practical application of these methodologies: (1) workflow optimization in a manufacturing environment using biomechanics data to reduce physical strain and improve task completion times; (2) resource allocation in Supply Chain Management (SCM) using PSO to minimize transportation and labor costs while improving warehouse utilization and delivery times; and (3) task scheduling in an office environment using GA to enhance task efficiency, workload distribution, and employee satisfaction. The case study results demonstrate the practical application of these methodologies: (1) a 21.6% reduction in shoulder joint strain and an 18.2% improvement in task completion time in a manufacturing setting; (2) a 16.1% reduction in transportation costs and an 18.6% improvement in warehouse utilization in SCM using PSO; and (3) a 17.6% decrease in makespan and a 29.8% improvement in workload distribution through GA-based task scheduling in an office environment. These findings underscore the potential of combining human-centered biomechanics data with bio-inspired optimization models to improve operational efficiency, employee well-being, and cost-effectiveness significantly.

Driven by the visions of Internet of Things and 5G communications, recent years have seen a paradigm shift in mobile computing, from the centralized mobile cloud computing toward mobile edge computing (MEC). The main feature of MEC is to push mobile computing, network control and storage to the network edges (e.g., base stations and access points) so as to enable computation-intensive and latency-critical applications at the resource-limited mobile devices. MEC promises dramatic reduction in latency and mobile energy consumption, tackling the key challenges for materializing 5G vision. The promised gains of MEC have motivated extensive efforts in both academia and industry on developing the technology. A main thrust of MEC research is to seamlessly merge the two disciplines of wireless communications and mobile computing, resulting in a wide-range of new designs ranging from techniques for computation offloading to network architectures. This paper provides a comprehensive survey of the state-of-the-art MEC research with a focus on joint radio-and-computational resource management. We also discuss a set of issues, challenges, and future research directions for MEC research, including MEC system deployment, cache-enabled MEC, mobility management for MEC, green MEC, as well as privacy-aware MEC. Advancements in these directions will facilitate the transformation of MEC from theory to practice. Finally, we introduce recent standardization efforts on MEC as well as some typical MEC application scenarios.

As a new paradigm of distributed computing, mobile edge computing (MEC) has gained increasing attention due to its ability to expand the capabilities of centralized cloud computing. In MEC environments, a software application typically consists of multiple micro‐services, which can be composed together in a flexible manner to achieve various user requests. However, the composition of micro‐services in MEC is still a challenging research issue arising from three aspects. Firstly, composite micro‐services constructed by ignoring the processing capabilities of different micro‐services may cause waste of edge resources. Secondly, edge servers' limitations in terms of computational power can easily cause service occupancy between composite micro‐services, severely affecting the user experience. Thirdly, in dynamic and unstable mobile environments, different edge users have different sensitivities to request latency, which increases the complexity of micro‐service composition. In order to improve edge resource utilization and user experience on micro‐service invocations, in this paper, we comprehensively consider the above three factors, and we first model the micro‐services composition problem in MEC as a constrained multi‐objective optimization problem. Then, a micro‐service composition optimization method M3C combining graph search and branch‐and‐bound strategy is proposed to find a composition solution set with low energy consumption and high success rate for multiple edge users. Finally, we perform a series of experiments on two widely used datasets. Experimental results show that our proposed approach significantly outperforms the four competing baseline approaches, and that it is sufficiently efficient for practical deployment.

Adaptive computation offloading and resource allocation strategy in a mobile edge computing environment

The rapid advancement of mobile edge computing (MEC) has led to a growing need for executing complex in‐vehicle applications at the endpoint. These applications are often modeled as workflows with clearly defined task dependencies. In MEC environments, computation offloading plays a crucial role in enhancing Quality of Service (QoS). Nevertheless, most existing offloading strategies primarily address independent tasks, paying little attention to the intricate dependencies among tasks. Moreover, key factors such as budgets and privacy protection are not well tackled. Hence, in this paper, we propose a computation offloading model for workflow applications in mobile edge computing, where the makespan is optimized under budget and privacy constraints. To address it, we introduce an intelligent scheduling method, which consists of task offloading and resource preparation stages, and offloads tasks from the end to the edge and clouds with awareness of task urgency, device computing capabilities, economic costs, and privacy protection. Simulation experiments are conducted based on realistic datasets. Results demonstrate that the proposed method can improve task execution efficiency and ensure data security, thereby enhancing the performance of workflow applications in mobile edge computing scenarios.

Mobile edge computing (MEC) brings a breakthrough for Internet of Things (IoT) for its ability of offloading tasks from user equipments (UEs) to nearby servers which have rich computation resource. 5G network brings a huge breakthrough on transmission rate. Together with MEC and 5G, both execution delay of tasks and time delay from downloading would be shorter and the quality of experience (QoE) of UEs can be improved. Considering practical conditions, the computation resource of an MEC server is finite to some extent. Therefore, how to prevent the abuse of MEC resource and further allocate the resource reasonably becomes a key point for an MEC system. In this paper, an MEC system with multi-user is considered where a base station (BS) with an MEC server, which can not only provide computation offloading service but also data cache service. Especially, we take the charge for both data transmission and task computation as one part of total cost of UEs, and then explore a joint optimization for downlink resource allocation, offloading decision and computation resource allocation to minimize the total cost in terms of the time delay and the charge to UEs. The proposed problem is formulated as a mixed integer programming (MIP) one which is NP-hard. Therefore, we decouple the original problem into two subproblems which are downlink resource allocation problem and joint offloading decision and computation resource allocation problem. Then we address these two subproblems by using convex and nonconvex optimization techniques, respectively. An iterative algorithm is proposed to obtain a suboptimal solution in polynomial time. Simulation results show that our proposed algorithm performs better than benchmark algorithms.