In recent years, multi-access edge computing (MEC) has become a promising technology used in 5G networks based on its ability to offload computational tasks from mobile devices (MDs) to edge servers in order to address MD-specific limitations. Despite considerable research on computation offloading in 5G networks, this activity in multi-tier multi-MEC server systems continues to attract attention. Here, we investigated a two-tier computation-offloading strategy for multi-user multi-MEC servers in heterogeneous networks. For this scenario, we formulated a joint resource-allocation and computation-offloading decision strategy to minimize the total computing overhead of MDs, including completion time and energy consumption. The optimization problem was formulated as a mixed-integer nonlinear program problem of NP-hard complexity. Under complex optimization and various application constraints, we divided the original problem into two subproblems: decisions of resource allocation and computation offloading. We developed an efficient, low-complexity algorithm using particle swarm optimization capable of high-quality solutions and guaranteed convergence, with a high-level heuristic (i.e., meta-heuristic) that performed well at solving a challenging optimization problem. Simulation results indicated that the proposed algorithm significantly reduced the total computing overhead of MDs relative to several baseline methods while guaranteeing to converge to stable solutions.

Accelerating the development of the 5G network and Internet of Things (IoT) application, multi-access edge computing (MEC) in a small-cell network (SCN) is designed to provide computation-intensive and latency-sensitive applications through task offloading. However, without collaboration, the resources of a single MEC server are wasted or sometimes overloaded for different service requests and applications; therefore, it increases the user’s task failure rate and task duration. Meanwhile, the distinct MEC server has faced some challenges to determine where the offloaded task will be processed because the system can hardly predict the demand of end-users in advance. As a result, the quality-of-service (QoS) will be deteriorated because of service interruptions, long execution, and waiting time. To improve the QoS, we propose a novel Fuzzy logic-based collaborative task offloading (FCTO) scheme in MEC-enabled densely deployed small-cell networks. In FCTO, the delay sensitivity of the QoS is considered as the Fuzzy input parameter to make a decision where to offload the task is beneficial. The key is to share computation resources with each other and among MEC servers by using fuzzy-logic approach to select a target MEC server for task offloading. As a result, it can accommodate more computation workload in the MEC system and reduce reliance on the remote cloud. The simulation result of the proposed scheme show that our proposed system provides the best performances in all scenarios with different criteria compared with other baseline algorithms in terms of the average task failure rate, task completion time, and server utilization.

No abstract

Multi-access edge computing (MEC) can improve the users' computational capacity and battery life by moving computing services to the network edge. In addition, data-content caching on a MEC server improves the user quality of experience and decreases the backhaul network congestion. Moreover, non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has recently been implemented to increase network throughput and capacity. Combining these techniques can improve the user performance and benefit the network. This paper investigates a combined computational offloading and data-content caching problem for NOMA-MEC systems. The aim was to achieve the minimum total completion latency of all users by jointly optimizing the offloading decision, caching strategy, computational resource, and power allocation. This satisfies the constraints within the scope of the potential violation for energy consumption, offloading decision, and the computation and storage capacity of the MEC server. The formulated problem is a mixed-integer non-linear programming and a non-convex problem. To solve this challenging problem, a block successive upper-bound minimization method was implemented to obtain efficient solutions. Numerous simulation results were presented to demonstrate the convergence and efficacy of the proposed algorithm. Compared with other schemes of all-offloading, local-only, and equal resources, our proposed algorithm can approximately reduce the total completion latency by 17.68%, 26.02%, and 70.98%. INDEX TERMS Multi-access edge computing, non-orthogonal multiple access, block successive upper-bound minimization, computational offloading, data-content caching.

Multi-access edge computing (MEC) is a new leading technology for meeting the demands of key performance indicators (KPIs) in 5G networks. However, in a rapidly changing dynamic environment, it is hard to find the optimal target server for processing offloaded tasks because we do not know the end users’ demands in advance. Therefore, quality of service (QoS) deteriorates because of increasing task failures and long execution latency from congestion. To reduce latency and avoid task failures from resource-constrained edge servers, vertical offloading between mobile devices with local-edge collaboration or with local edge-remote cloud collaboration have been proposed in previous studies. However, they ignored the nearby edge server in the same tier that has excess computing resources. Therefore, this paper introduces a fuzzy decision-based cloud-MEC collaborative task offloading management system called FTOM, which takes advantage of powerful remote cloud-computing capabilities and utilizes neighboring edge servers. The main objective of the FTOM scheme is to select the optimal target node for task offloading based on server capacity, latency sensitivity, and the network’s condition. Our proposed scheme can make dynamic decisions where local or nearby MEC servers are preferred for offloading delay-sensitive tasks, and delay-tolerant high resource-demand tasks are offloaded to a remote cloud server. Simulation results affirm that our proposed FTOM scheme significantly improves the rate of successfully executing offloaded tasks by approximately 68.5%, and reduces task completion time by 66.6%, when compared with a local edge offloading (LEO) scheme. The improved and reduced rates are 32.4% and 61.5%, respectively, when compared with a two-tier edge orchestration-based offloading (TTEO) scheme. They are 8.9% and 47.9%, respectively, when compared with a fuzzy orchestration-based load balancing (FOLB) scheme, approximately 3.2% and 49.8%, respectively, when compared with a fuzzy workload orchestration-based task offloading (WOTO) scheme, and approximately 38.6%% and 55%, respectively, when compared with a fuzzy edge-orchestration based collaborative task offloading (FCTO) scheme.