Workload distribution with rateless encoding: A low-latency computation offloading method within edge networks

Recently, edge computing is getting attention as a new computing paradigm that is expected to achieve short-delay and high-throughput task offloading for large scale Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications. In edge computing, workload distribution is one of the most critical issues that largely influences the delay and throughput performance of edge clouds, especially in distributed Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) over networked edge nodes. In this paper, we propose the Resource Allocation Control Engine with Reinforcement learning (RACER), which provides an efficient workload distribution strategy to reduce the task response slowdown with per-task response time Quality-of-Service (QoS). First, we present a novel problem formulation with the per-task QoS constraint derived from the well-known token bucket mechanism. Second, we employ a problem relaxation to reduce the overall computation complexity by compromising just a bit of optimality. Lastly, we take the deep reinforcement learning approach as an alternative solution to the workload distribution problem to cope with the uncertainty and dynamicity of underlying environments. Evaluation results show that RACER achieves a significant improvement in terms of per-task QoS violation ratio, average slowdown, and control efficiency, compared to AREA, a state-of-the-art workload distribution method.

Edge computing environments face unprecedented challenges in deploying large language models due to severe resource constraints, latency requirements, and privacy concerns that traditional cloud-based solutions cannot address. Current approaches struggle with the fundamental mismatch between LLMs' computational demands - requiring gigabytes of memory and billions of operations - and edge devices' limited capabilities, resulting in either degraded performance or infeasible deployments. This survey presents a systematic analysis of emerging techniques that enable efficient LLM deployment at the edge through four complementary strategies: model compression via quantisation and pruning that reduces memory footprint by up to 75% while maintaining accuracy, knowledge distillation frameworks achieving 4000× parameter reduction with comparable performance, edge-cloud collaborative architectures like EdgeShard delivering 50% latency reduction through intelligent workload distribution, and hardware-specific optimisations leveraging specialised accelerators. Extensive evaluation across multiple real-world testbeds demonstrates that hybrid edge-microservices architectures achieve 46% lower P99 latency and 67% higher throughput compared to monolithic approaches, while supporting 10,000 concurrent users with 100 ms latency constraints and reducing bandwidth consumption by 99.5% through selective cloud offloading. These advancements enable transformative applications in healthcare monitoring, autonomous systems, real-time IoT analytics, and personalised AI services, fundamentally reshaping how intelligence is delivered at the network edge while preserving privacy and ensuring responsiveness critical for next-generation computing paradigms.