Multi-Queue-Based Offloading Strategy for Deep Reinforcement Learning Tasks

Abstract

With the boom in mobile internet services, computationally intensive applications such as virtual and augmented reality have emerged. Mobile edge computing (MEC) technology allows mobile devices to offload heavy computational tasks to edge servers, which are located at the edge of the network. This technique is considered an effective approach to help reduce the burden on devices and enable efficient task offloading. This paper addresses a dynamic real-time task-offloading problem within a stochastic multi-user MEC network, focusing on the long-term stability of system energy consumption and energy budget constraints. To solve this problem, a task-offloading strategy with long-term constraints is proposed, optimized through the construction of multiple queues to maintain users’ long-term quality of experience (QoE). The problem is decoupled using Lyapunov theory into a single time-slot problem, modeled as a Markov decision process (MDP). A deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based LMADDPG algorithm is introduced to solve the task-offloading decision. Finally, Experiments are conducted under the constraints of a limited MEC energy budget and the need to maintain the long-term energy stability of the system. The results from simulation experiments demonstrate that the algorithm outperforms other baseline algorithms in terms of task-offloading decisions.