Search

Integrated communication–sensing–computing (ICSC) satellites, which integrate edge computing servers on Earth observation satellites to process collected data directly in orbit, are attracting growing attention. Nevertheless, some monitoring tasks involve sequential sub-tasks like target observation and movement prediction, leading to data dependencies. Moreover, the limited energy supply on satellites requires the sequential execution of sub-tasks. Therefore, inappropriate assignments can cause circular waiting among satellites, resulting in deadlocks. This paper formulates task offloading in ICSC satellites with data-dependent constraints as a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) problem, aiming to minimize service latency and energy consumption simultaneously. Given the non-centrality of ICSC satellites, we propose a distributed deadlock-free task offloading (DDFTO) algorithm. DDFTO operates in parallel on each satellite, alternating between sub-task inclusion and consensus and sub-task removal until a common offloading assignment is reached. To avoid deadlocks arising from sub-task inclusion, we introduce the deadlock-free insertion mechanism (DFIM), which strategically restricts the insertion positions of sub-tasks based on interval relationships, ensuring deadlock-free assignments. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of DFIM in avoiding deadlocks and show that the DDFTO algorithm outperforms benchmark algorithms in achieving deadlock-free offloading assignments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) has been widely applied in various Internet of Things (IoT) scenarios due to its advantages of low latency and low energy consumption. However, the offloading of tasks generated by terminal devices to edge servers inevitably raises privacy leakage concerns. Given the limited resources in MEC networks, this paper proposes a task scheduling strategy, named DQN-DP, to minimize location privacy leakage under the constraint of offloading costs. The strategy is based on a differential privacy location obfuscation probability density function. Theoretical analysis demonstrates that the probability density function employed in this study is valid and satisfies ϵ -differential privacy in terms of security. Numerical results indicate that, compared to existing baseline approaches, the proposed DQN-DP algorithm effectively balances privacy leakage and offloading cost. Specifically, DQN-DP reduces privacy leakage by approximately 20% relative to baseline approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid advancement of the Internet of Things and the emergence of 6G networks in smart city environments, a growth in the generation of data, commonly known as big data, is expected to consequently lead to higher latency. To mitigate this latency, mobile edge computing has been proposed to alleviate a portion of the workload from mobile devices by offloading it to nearby edge servers equipped with appropriate computational resources. However, existing solutions often exhibit poor performance when confronted with complex network topologies. Thus, this paper introduces a decentralized mechanism aimed at determining the locations of network edge nodes in such complex network topologies, characterized by lengthy execution times. Our proposal provides performance improvements and offers scalability and flexibility as networks become more complex. Experimental evaluations are conducted using the Shanghai Telecom dataset to validate our proposed approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Task offloading and resource allocation is a research hotspot in cloud-edge collaborative computing. Many existing pieces of research adopted single-agent reinforcement learning to solve this problem, which has some defects such as low robustness, large decision space, and ignoring delayed rewards. In view of the above deficiencies, this paper constructs a cloud-edge collaborative computing model, and related task queue, delay, and energy consumption model, and gives joint optimization problem modeling for task offloading and resource allocation with multiple constraints. Then, in order to solve the joint optimization problem, this paper designs a decentralized offloading and scheduling scheme based on "task-oriented" multi-agent reinforcement learning. In this scheme, we present information synchronization protocols and offloading scheduling rules and use edge servers as agents to construct a multi-agent system based on the Actor–Critic framework. In order to solve delayed rewards, this paper models the offloading and scheduling problem as a "task-oriented" Markov decision process. This process abandons the commonly used equidistant time slot model but uses dynamic and parallel slots in the step of task processing time. Finally, an offloading decision algorithm TOMAC-PPO is proposed. The algorithm applies the proximal policy optimization to the multi-agent system and combines the Transformer neural network model to realize the memory and prediction of network state information. Experimental results show that this algorithm has better convergence speed and can effectively reduce the service cost, energy consumption, and task drop rate under high load and high failure rates. For example, the proposed TOMAC-PPO can reduce the average cost by from 19.4% to 66.6% compared to other offloading schemes under the same network load. In addition, the drop rate of some baseline algorithms with 50 users can achieve 62.5% for critical tasks, while the proposed TOMAC-PPO only has 5.5%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Device-to-device (D2D) is a pivotal technology in the next generation of communication, allowing for direct task offloading between mobile devices (MDs) to improve the efficient utilization of idle resources. This paper proposes a novel algorithm for dynamic task offloading between the active MDs and the idle MDs in a D2D–MEC (mobile edge computing) system by deploying multi-agent deep reinforcement learning (DRL) to minimize the long-term average delay of delay-sensitive tasks under deadline constraints. Our core innovation is a dynamic partitioning scheme for idle and active devices in the D2D–MEC system, accounting for stochastic task arrivals and multi-time-slot task execution, which has been insufficiently explored in the existing literature. We adopt a queue-based system to formulate a dynamic task offloading optimization problem. To address the challenges of large action space and the coupling of actions across time slots, we model the problem as a Markov decision process (MDP) and perform multi-agent DRL through multi-agent proximal policy optimization (MAPPO). We employ a centralized training with decentralized execution (CTDE) framework to enable each MD to make offloading decisions solely based on its local system state. Extensive simulations demonstrate the efficiency and fast convergence of our algorithm. In comparison to the existing sub-optimal results deploying single-agent DRL, our algorithm reduces the average task completion delay by 11.0% and the ratio of dropped tasks by 17.0%. Our proposed algorithm is particularly pertinent to sensor networks, where mobile devices equipped with sensors generate a substantial volume of data that requires timely processing to ensure quality of experience (QoE) and meet the service-level agreements (SLAs) of delay-sensitive applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Federated learning (FL) can break the problem of data silos and allow multiple data owners to collaboratively train shared machine learning models without disclosing local data in mobile edge computing. However, how to incentivize these clients to actively participate in training and ensure efficient convergence and high test accuracy of the model has become an important issue. Traditional methods often use a reverse auction framework but ignore the consideration of client volatility. This paper proposes a multi-dimensional reverse auction mechanism (MRATR) that considers the uncertainty of client training time and reputation. First, we introduce reputation to objectively reflect the data quality and training stability of the client. Then, we transform the goal of maximizing social welfare into an optimization problem, which is proven to be NP-hard. Then, we propose a multi-dimensional auction mechanism MRATR that can find the optimal client selection and task allocation strategy considering clients' volatility and data quality differences. The computational complexity of this mechanism is polynomial, which can promote the rapid convergence of FL task models while ensuring near-optimal social welfare maximization and achieving high test accuracy. Finally, the effectiveness of this mechanism is verified through simulation experiments. Compared with a series of other mechanisms, the MRATR mechanism has faster convergence speed and higher testing accuracy on both the CIFAR-10 and IMAGE-100 datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maritime transport plays a critical role in global logistics. Compared to road transport, the pace of research and development is much slower for maritime transport. It faces many major challenges, such as busy ports, long journeys, significant accidents, and greenhouse gas emissions. The problems have been exacerbated by recent regional conflicts and increasing international shipping demands. Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASSs) are widely regarded as a promising solution to addressing maritime transport problems with improved safety and efficiency. With advanced sensing and path-planning technologies, MASSs can autonomously understand environments and navigate without human intervention. However, the complex traffic and water conditions and the corner cases are large barriers in the way of MASSs being practically deployed. In this paper, to address the above issues, we investigated the application of Large Language Models (LLMs), which have demonstrated strong generalization abilities. Given the substantial computational demands of LLMs, we propose a framework for LLM-assisted navigation in connected MASSs. In this framework, LLMs are deployed onshore or in remote clouds, to facilitate navigation and provide guidance services for MASSs. Additionally, certain large oceangoing vessels can deploy LLMs locally, to obtain real-time navigation recommendations. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to apply LLMs to assist with ship navigation. Specifically, MASSs transmit assistance requests to LLMs, which then process these requests and return assistance guidance. A crucial aspect, which has not been investigated in the literature, of this safety-critical LLM-assisted guidance system is the knowledge and safety performance of the LLMs, in regard to ship handling, navigation rules, and skills. To assess LLMs' knowledge of navigation rules and their qualifications for navigation assistance systems, we designed and conducted navigation theory tests for LLMs, which consisted of more than 1500 multiple-choice questions. These questions were similar to the official theory exams that are used to award the Officer Of the Watch (OOW) certificate based on the Standards of Training, Certification, and Watchkeeping (STCW) for Seafarers. A wide range of LLMs were tested, which included commercial ones from OpenAI and Baidu and an open-source one called ChatGLM, from Tsinghua. Our experimental results indicated that among all the tested LLMs, only GPT-4o passed the tests, with an accuracy of 86%. This suggests that, while the current LLMs possess significant potential in regard to navigation and guidance systems for connected MASSs, further improvements are needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online detection devices, powered by artificial intelligence technologies, enable the comprehensive and continuous detection of high-speed railways (HSRs). However, the computation-intensive and latency-sensitive nature of these detection tasks often exceeds local processing capabilities. Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) emerges as a key solution in the railway Internet of Things (IoT) scenario to address these challenges. Nevertheless, the rapidly varying channel conditions in HSR scenarios pose significant challenges for efficient resource allocation. In this paper, a computation offloading system model for detection tasks in the railway IoT scenario is proposed. This system includes direct and relay transmission models, incorporating Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) technology. This paper focuses on the offloading strategy for subcarrier assignment, mode selection, relay power allocation, and computing resource management within this system to minimize the average delay ratio (the ratio of delay to the maximum tolerable delay). However, this optimization problem is a complex Mixed-Integer Non-Linear Programming (MINLP) problem. To address this, we present a low-complexity subcarrier allocation algorithm to reduce the dimensionality of decision-making actions. Furthermore, we propose an improved Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG) algorithm that represents discrete variables using selection probabilities to handle the hybrid action space problem. Our results indicate that the proposed system model adapts well to the offloading issues of detection tasks in HSR scenarios, and the improved DDPG algorithm efficiently identifies optimal computation offloading strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the proliferation of intelligent applications, mobile devices are increasingly handling computation-intensive tasks but often struggle with limited computing power and energy resources. Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) offers a solution by enabling these devices to offload computation-intensive tasks to resource-rich edge servers, thus reducing processing latency and energy consumption. However, existing task-offloading strategies often neglect critical security concerns. In this paper, we propose a security-aware task-offloading framework that utilizes Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) to solve these challenges. Our framework is designed to minimize the latency of task accomplishment and energy consumption while ensuring data security. We model system utility as a Markov Decision Process (MDP) and design a Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO)-based algorithm to derive optimal offloading strategies. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm outperforms traditional methods regarding task execution latency and energy consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Edge servers frequently manage their own offline digital twin (DT) services, in addition to caching online digital twin services. However, current research often overlooks the impact of offline caching services on memory and computation resources, which can hinder the efficiency of online service task processing on edge servers. In this study, we concentrated on service caching and task offloading within a collaborative edge computing system by emphasizing the integrated quality of service (QoS) for both online and offline edge services. We considered the resource usage of both online and offline services, along with incoming online requests. To maximize the overall QoS utility, we established an optimization objective that rewards the throughput of online services while penalizing offline services that miss their soft deadlines. We formulated this as a utility maximization problem, which was proven to be NP-hard. To tackle this complexity, we reframed the optimization problem as a Markov decision process (MDP) and introduced a joint optimization algorithm for service caching and task offloading by leveraging the deep Q-network (DQN). Comprehensive experiments revealed that our algorithm enhanced the utility by at least 14.01% compared with the baseline algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, many mobile edge computing network solutions have enhanced data privacy and security and built a trusted network mechanism by introducing blockchain technology. However, this also complicates the task-offloading problem of blockchain-enabled mobile edge computing, and traditional evolutionary learning and single-agent reinforcement learning algorithms are difficult to solve effectively. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-enabled mobile edge computing task-offloading strategy based on multi-agent reinforcement learning. First, we innovatively propose a blockchain-enabled mobile edge computing task-offloading model by comprehensively considering optimization objectives such as task execution energy consumption, processing delay, user privacy metrics, and blockchain incentive rewards. Then, we propose a deep reinforcement learning algorithm based on multiple agents sharing a global memory pool using the actor–critic architecture, which enables each agent to acquire the experience of another agent during the training process to enhance the collaborative capability among agents and overall performance. In addition, we adopt attenuatable Gaussian noise into the action space selection process in the actor network to avoid falling into the local optimum. Finally, experiments show that this scheme's comprehensive cost calculation performance is enhanced by more than 10% compared with other multi-agent reinforcement learning algorithms. In addition, Gaussian random noise-based action space selection and a global memory pool improve the performance by 38.36% and 43.59%, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the development of digital economy technologies, mobile edge computing (MEC) has emerged as a promising computing paradigm that provides mobile devices with closer edge computing resources. Because of high mobility, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been extensively utilized to augment MEC to improve scalability and adaptability. However, with more UAVs or mobile devices, the search space grows exponentially, leading to the curse of dimensionality. This paper focus on the combined challenges of the deployment of UAVs and the task of offloading mobile devices in a large-scale UAV-assisted MEC. Specifically, the joint UAV deployment and task offloading problem is first modeled as a large-scale multiobjective optimization problem with the purpose of minimizing energy consumption while improving user satisfaction. Then, a large-scale UAV deployment and task offloading multiobjective optimization method based on the evolutionary algorithm, called LDOMO, is designed to address the above formulated problem. In LDOMO, a CSO-based evolutionary strategy and a MLP-based evolutionary strategy are proposed to explore solution spaces with different features for accelerating convergence and maintaining the diversity of the population, and two local search optimizers are designed to improve the quality of the solution. Finally, simulation results show that our proposed LDOMO outperforms several representative multiobjective evolutionary algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Satellite edge computing (SEC) plays an increasing role in earth observation, due to its global coverage and low-latency computing service. In SEC, it is pivotal to offload diverse observation-data-processing tasks to the appropriate satellites. Nevertheless, due to the sparse intersatellite link (ISL) connections, it is hard to gather complete information from all satellites. Moreover, the dynamic arriving tasks will also influence the obtained offloading assignment. Therefore, one daunting challenge in SEC is achieving optimal offloading assignments with consideration of the dynamic delay-sensitive tasks. In this paper, we formulate task offloading in SEC with delay-sensitive tasks as a mixed-integer linear programming problem, aiming to minimize the weighted sum of deadline violations and energy consumption. Due to the limited ISLs, we propose a fully-decentralized method, called the PI-based task offloading (PITO) algorithm. The PITO operates on each satellite in parallel and only relies on local communication via ISLs. Tasks can be directly offloaded on board without depending on any central server. To further handle the dynamic arriving tasks, we propose a re-offloading mechanism based on the match-up strategy, which reduces the tasks involved and avoids unnecessary insertion attempts by pruning. Finally, extensive experiments demonstrate that PITO outperforms state-of-the-art algorithms when solving task offloading in SEC, and the proposed re-offloading mechanism is significantly more efficient than existing methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a joint optimization algorithm of offloading decision, energy harvesting time, and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) location is proposed for user equipment (UEs)'s task completion latency problem in a communication–sensing–computing integration scenario with wireless energy supply. Under the constraints of causality of energy harvesting consumption by the UEs and conditional mutual information, the total latency minimization problem of the UEs is established. Firstly, the optimization variables of the problem are transformed from three variables of offloading decision, energy harvesting time, and UAV location to two variables of offloading decision and UAV location by means of the derived closed expression, and then the transformed optimization problem is decomposed into the offloading decision optimization sub-problem and the UAV location optimization sub-problem to be solved alternately and iteratively. The genetic algorithm is employed to tackle the optimization sub-problem of offloading decisions, and the successive convex approximation algorithm is applied to the drone positioning optimization sub-problem. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm in this paper reduces the average task completion latency by 35 percent and 15 percent, respectively, compared to the two baseline algorithms for different numbers of UEs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vehicular Edge Computing (VEC) is a crucial application of Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) in vehicular networks. In VEC networks, the computation tasks of vehicle terminals (VTs) can be offloaded to nearby MEC servers, overcoming the limitations of VTs' processing power and reducing latency caused by distant cloud communication. However, a mismatch between VTs' demanding tasks and MEC servers' limited resources can overload MEC servers, impacting Quality of Service (QoS) for computationally intensive tasks. Additionally, vehicle mobility can disrupt communication with static MEC servers, further affecting VTs' QoS. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a vehicle collaborative partial computation offloading model. This model allows VTs to offload tasks to two types of service nodes: collaborative vehicles and MEC servers. Factors like a vehicle's mobility, remaining battery power, and available computational power are also considered when evaluating its suitability for collaborative offloading. Furthermore, we design a deep reinforcement learning-based strategy for collaborative partial computation offloading that minimizes overall task delay while meeting individual latency constraints. Experimental results demonstrate that compared to traditional approaches without vehicle collaboration, this scheme significantly reduces latency and achieves a significant reduction (around 2%) in the failure rate under tighter latency constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of the rapid development of the Internet of Vehicles, virtual reality, automatic driving and the industrial Internet, the terminal devices in the network show explosive growth. As a result, more and more information is generated from the edge of the network, which makes the data throughput increase dramatically in the mobile communication network. As the key technology of the fifth-generation mobile communication network, mobile edge caching technology which caches popular data to the edge server deployed at the edge of the network avoids the data transmission delay of the backhaul link and the occurrence of network congestion. With the growing scale of the network, distributing hot data from cloud servers to edge servers will generate huge energy consumption. To realize the green and sustainable development of the communication industry and reduce the energy consumption of distribution of data that needs to be cached in edge servers, we make the first attempt to propose and solve the problem of edge caching data distribution with minimum energy consumption (ECDDMEC) in this paper. First, we model and formulate the problem as a constrained optimization problem and then prove its NP-hardness. Subsequently, we design a greedy algorithm with computational complexity of O (n 2) to solve the problem approximately. Experimental results show that compared with the distribution strategy of each edge server directly requesting data from the cloud server, the strategy obtained by the algorithm can significantly reduce the energy consumption of data distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Federated learning (FL) in mobile edge computing has emerged as a promising machine-learning paradigm in the Internet of Things, enabling distributed training without exposing private data. It allows multiple mobile devices (MDs) to collaboratively create a global model. FL not only addresses the issue of private data exposure but also alleviates the burden on a centralized server, which is common in conventional centralized learning. However, a critical issue in FL is the imposed computing for local training on multiple MDs, which often have limited computing capabilities. This limitation poses a challenge for MDs to actively contribute to the training process. To tackle this problem, this paper proposes an adaptive dataset management (ADM) scheme, aiming to reduce the burden of local training on MDs. Through an empirical study on the influence of dataset size on accuracy improvement over communication rounds, we confirm that the amount of dataset has a reduced impact on accuracy gain. Based on this finding, we introduce a discount factor that represents the reduced impact of the size of the dataset on the accuracy gain over communication rounds. To address the ADM problem, which involves determining how much the dataset should be reduced over classes while considering both the proposed discounting factor and Kullback–Leibler divergence (KLD), a theoretical framework is presented. The ADM problem is a non-convex optimization problem. To solve it, we propose a greedy-based heuristic algorithm that determines a suboptimal solution with low complexity. Simulation results demonstrate that our proposed scheme effectively alleviates the training burden on MDs while maintaining acceptable training accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider an integrated sensing, communication, and computation (ISCC) system to alleviate the spectrum congestion and computation burden problem. Specifically, while serving communication users, a base station (BS) actively engages in sensing targets and collaborates seamlessly with the edge server to concurrently process the acquired sensing data for efficient target recognition. A significant challenge in edge computing systems arises from the inherent uncertainty in computations, mainly stemming from the unpredictable complexity of tasks. With this consideration, we address the computation uncertainty by formulating a robust communication and computing resource allocation problem in ISCC systems. The primary goal of the system is to minimize total energy consumption while adhering to perception and delay constraints. This is achieved through the optimization of transmit beamforming, offloading ratio, and computing resource allocation, effectively managing the trade-offs between local execution and edge computing. To overcome this challenge, we employ a Markov decision process (MDP) in conjunction with the proximal policy optimization (PPO) algorithm, establishing an adaptive learning strategy. The proposed algorithm stands out for its rapid training speed, ensuring compliance with latency requirements for perception and computation in applications. Simulation results highlight its robustness and effectiveness within ISCC systems compared to baseline approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, mobile edge computing has become one of the popular methods to provide computing resources for the body area network, but existing research only considers the problem of minimizing the cost of offloading when solving the optimization problem of task-offloading, ignoring the trust problem of edge computing nodes, and offloading tasks on edge nodes may cause user information disclosure and reduce the quality of user experience. In response to this situation, this study aims to minimize the average user cost and designs a task-offloading strategy based on the D3QN (dueling double deep Q-network) algorithm in conjunction with the blockchain information security storage model. This strategy uses deep reinforcement learning algorithms to obtain the minimum average offloading cost of the system while considering user latency, energy consumption, and data protection conditions. The experimental simulation results show that compared to traditional schemes and other reinforcement learning-based schemes, this scheme can more effectively reduce the average cost of the system, and the average cost is reduced by 31.25% when reaching convergence. In addition, as the complexity of the model increases, this scheme can provide users with better experience quality, with 53.7% of the 1000 users having a very good experience quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the ongoing advancement of electric power Internet of Things (IoT), traditional power inspection methods face challenges such as low efficiency and high risk. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have emerged as a more efficient solution for inspecting power facilities due to their high maneuverability, excellent line-of-sight communication capabilities, and strong adaptability. However, UAVs typically grapple with limited computational power and energy resources, which constrain their effectiveness in handling computationally intensive and latency-sensitive inspection tasks. In response to this issue, we propose a UAV task offloading strategy based on deep reinforcement learning (DRL), which is designed for power inspection scenarios consisting of mobile edge computing (MEC) servers and multiple UAVs. Firstly, we propose an innovative UAV-Edge server collaborative computing architecture to fully exploit the mobility of UAVs and the high-performance computing capabilities of MEC servers. Secondly, we established a computational model concerning energy consumption and task processing latency in the UAV power inspection system, enhancing our understanding of the trade-offs involved in UAV offloading strategies. Finally, we formalize the task offloading problem as a multi-objective optimization issue and simultaneously model it as a Markov Decision Process (MDP). Subsequently, we proposed a task offloading algorithm based on a Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (OTDDPG) to obtain the optimal task offloading strategy for UAVs. The simulation results demonstrated that this approach outperforms baseline methods with significant improvements in task processing latency and energy consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid growth of edge devices and mobile applications has driven the adoption of edge computing to handle computing tasks closer to end-users. However, the heterogeneity of edge devices and their limited computing resources raise challenges in the efficient allocation of computing resources to complete services with different characteristics and preferences. In this paper, we delve into an edge scenario comprising multiple Edge Computing Servers (ECSs), multiple Device-to-Device (D2D) Edge Nodes (ENs), and multiple edge devices. In order to address the resource allocation challenge among ECSs, ENs, and edge devices in high-workload environments, as well as the pricing of edge resources within the resource market framework, we propose a Risk Assessment Contract Algorithm (RACA) based on risk assessment theory. The RACA enables ECSs to assess risks associated with local users by estimating their future revenue potential and updating the contract autonomously at present and in the future. ENs acquire additional resources from ECSs to efficiently complete local users' tasks. Simultaneously, ENs can also negotiate reasonable resource requests and pricing with ECSs by a Stackelberg game algorithm. Furthermore, we prove the unique existence of Nash equilibrium in the established game, implying that equilibrium solutions can stably converge through computational methods in heterogeneous environments. Finally, through simulation experiments on the dataset, we demonstrate that risk assessment can better enhance the overall profit capability of the system. Moreover, through multiple experiments, we showcase the stability of the contract's autonomous update capability. The RACA exhibits better utility in terms of system profit capabilities, stability in high-workload environments, and energy consumption. This work provides a more dynamic and effective solution to the resource allocation problem in edge systems under high-workload environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internet of Things (IoT) devices can integrate with applications requiring intensive contextual data processing, intelligent vehicle control, healthcare remote sensing, VR, data mining, traffic management, and interactive applications. However, there are computationally intensive tasks that need to be completed quickly within the time constraints of IoT devices. To address this challenge, researchers have proposed computation offloading, where computing tasks are sent to edge servers instead of being executed locally on user devices. This approach involves using edge servers located near users in cellular network base stations, and also known as Mobile Edge Computing (MEC). The goal is to offload tasks to edge servers, optimizing both latency and energy consumption. The main objective of this paper mentioned in the summary is to design an algorithm for time- and energy-optimized task offloading decision-making in MEC environments. Therefore, we developed a Lagrange Duality Resource Optimization Algorithm (LDROA) to optimize for both decision offloading and resource allocation for tasks, whether to locally execute or offload to an edge server. The LDROA technique produces superior simulation outcomes in terms of task offloading, with improved performance in computation latency and cost usage compared to conventional methods like Random Offloading, Load Balancing, and the Greedy Latency Offloading scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the development of the Internet of Things (IoT) technology, massive amounts of sensor data in applications such as fire monitoring need to be transmitted to edge servers for timely processing. However, there is an energy-hole phenomenon in transmitting data only through terrestrial multi-hop networks. In this study, we focus on the data collection task in an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-assisted mobile edge computing (MEC) network, where a UAV is deployed as the mobile data collector for the ground sensor nodes (SNs) to ensure high information freshness. Meanwhile, the UAV is equipped with an edge server for data caching. We first establish a rigorous mathematical model in which the age of information (AoI) is used as a measure of information freshness, related to both the data collection time and the UAV's flight time. Then a mixed-integer non-convex optimization problem is formulated to minimize the peak AoI of the collected data. To solve the problem efficiently, we propose an iterative two-step algorithm named the AoI-minimized association and trajectory planning (AoI-MATP) algorithm. In each iteration, the optimal SN–collection point (CP) associations and CP locations for the parameter ε are first obtained by the affinity propagation clustering algorithm. The optimal UAV trajectory is found using an improved elite genetic algorithm. Simulation results show that based on the optimized ε , the AoI-MATP algorithm can achieve a balance between data collection time and flight time, reducing the peak AoI of the collected data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to CPU and memory limitations, mobile IoT devices face challenges in handling delay-sensitive and computationally intensive tasks. Mobile edge computing addresses this issue by offloading tasks to the wireless network edge, reducing latency and energy consumption. UAVs serve as auxiliary edge clouds, providing flexible deployment and reliable wireless communication. To minimize latency and energy consumption, considering the limited resources and computing capabilities of UAVs, a multi-UAV and multi-edge cloud system was deployed for task offloading and UAV trajectory optimization. A joint optimization model for computing task offloading and UAV trajectory was proposed. During model training, a UAV communication mechanism was introduced to address potential coverage issues for mobile user devices through multiple UAVs or complete coverage. Considering the fact that decisions made by UAVs during trajectory planning may lead to collisions, a MADDPG algorithm with an integrated safety layer was adopted to obtain the safest actions closest to the joint UAV actions under safety constraints, thereby avoiding collisions between UAVs. Numerical simulation results demonstrate that the optimization method based on safety reinforcement learning considering communication cost outperforms other optimization methods. Communication between UAVs effectively addresses the issue of redundant or incomplete coverage for mobile user devices, reducing computation latency and energy consumption for task offloading. Additionally, the introduction of safety reinforcement learning effectively avoids collisions between UAVs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prevalence of intelligent transportation systems in alleviating traffic congestion and reducing the number of traffic accidents has risen in recent years owing to the rapid advancement of information and communication technology (ICT). Nevertheless, the increase in Internet of Vehicles (IoV) users has led to massive data transmission, resulting in significant delays and network instability during vehicle operation due to limited bandwidth resources. This poses serious security risks to the traffic system and endangers the safety of IoV users. To alleviate the computational load on the core network and provide more timely, effective, and secure data services to proximate users, this paper proposes the deployment of edge servers utilizing edge computing technologies. The massive image data of users are processed using an image compression algorithm, revealing a positive correlation between the compression quality factor and the image's spatial occupancy. A performance analysis model for the ADHOC MAC (ADHOC Medium Access Control) protocol is established, elucidating a positive correlation between the frame length and the number of service users, and a negative correlation between the service user rate and the compression quality factor. The optimal service user rate, within the constraints of compression that does not compromise detection accuracy, is determined by using the target detection result as a criterion for effective compression. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme satisfies the object detection accuracy requirements in the IoV context. It enables the number of successfully connected users to approach the total user count, and increases the service rate by up to 34%, thereby enhancing driving safety, stability, and efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have emerged as an efficient solution for numerous real-time applications, attributable to their compactness, cost-effectiveness, and ease of deployment. The rapid advancement of 5G technology and mobile edge computing (MEC) in recent years has catalyzed the transition towards large-scale deployment of WSN devices. However, the resulting data proliferation and the dynamics of communication environments introduce new challenges for WSN communication: (1) ensuring robust communication in adverse environments and (2) effectively alleviating bandwidth pressure from massive data transmission. In response to the aforementioned challenges, this paper proposes a semantic communication solution. Specifically, considering the limited computational and storage resources of WSN devices, we propose a flexible Attention-based Adaptive Coding (AAC) module. This module integrates window and channel attention mechanisms, dynamically adjusts semantic information in response to the current channel state, and facilitates adaptation of a single model across various Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) environments. Furthermore, to validate the effectiveness of this approach, the paper introduces an end-to-end Joint Source Channel Coding (JSCC) scheme for image semantic communication, employing the AAC module. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed scheme surpasses existing deep JSCC schemes across datasets of varying resolutions; furthermore, they validate the efficacy of the proposed AAC module, which is capable of dynamically adjusting critical information according to the current channel state. This enables the model to be trained over a range of SNRs and obtain better results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Offloading computation-intensive tasks to mobile edge computing (MEC) servers, such as road-side units (RSUs) and a base station (BS), can enhance the computation capacities of the vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication system. In this work, we study an MEC-assisted multi-vehicle V2X communication system in which multi-antenna RSUs with liner receivers and a multi-antenna BS with a zero-forcing (ZF) receiver work as MEC servers jointly to offload the tasks of the vehicles. To control the energy consumption and ensure the delay requirement of the V2X communication system, an energy consumption minimization problem under a delay constraint is formulated. The multi-agent deep reinforcement learning (MADRL) algorithm is proposed to solve the non-convex energy optimization problem, which can train vehicles to select the beneficial server association, transmit power and offloading ratio intelligently according to the reward function related to the delay and energy consumption. The improved K-nearest neighbors (KNN) algorithm is proposed to assign vehicles to the specific RSU, which can reduce the action space dimensions and the complexity of the MADRL algorithm. Numerical simulation results show that the proposed scheme can decrease energy consumption while satisfying the delay constraint. When the RSUs adopt the indirect transmission mode and are equipped with matched-filter (MF) receivers, the proposed joint optimization scheme can decrease the energy consumption by 56.90% and 65.52% compared to the maximum transmit power and full offloading schemes, respectively. When the RSUs are equipped with ZF receivers, the proposed scheme can decrease the energy consumption by 36.8% compared to the MF receivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile edge computing (MEC) distributes computing and storage resources to the edge of the network closer to the user and significantly reduces user task completion latency and system energy consumption. This paper investigates the problem of computation offloading in a three-tier mobile edge computing network composed of multiple users, multiple edge servers, and a cloud server. In this network, each user's task can be divided into multiple subtasks with serial and parallel priority relationships existing among these subtasks. An optimization model is established with the objective of minimizing the total user delay and processor cost under constraints such as the available resources of users and servers and the interrelationships among the subtasks. An improved gravitational search algorithm (IGSA) is proposed to solve this optimization model. In contrast with the other gravitational search algorithm, the convergence factor is introduced in the calculation of the resultant force and the crossover operation in a genetic algorithm is performed when generating the new particles during each iteration. The simulation results show that the proposed IGSA greatly improves the system performance compared with the existing algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile edge computing extends the capabilities of the cloud to the edge to meet the latency performance required by new types of applications. Task caching reduces network energy consumption by caching task applications and associated databases in advance on edge devices. However, determining an effective caching strategy is crucial since users generate numerous repetitive tasks, but edge devices and storage resources are limited. We aimed to address the problem of highly coupled decision variables in dynamic task caching and computational offloading for multiuser multitasking in mobile edge computing systems. This paper presents a joint computation and caching framework with the aim of minimizing delays and energy expenditure for mobile users and transforming the problem into a form of reinforcement learning. Based on this, an improved deep reinforcement learning algorithm, P-DDPG, is proposed to achieve efficient computation offloading and task caching decisions for mobile users. The algorithm integrates a deep and deterministic policy grading and a prioritized empirical replay mechanism to reduce system costs. The simulations show that the designed algorithm performs better in terms of task latencies and lower computing power consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the advancement of information and communication technologies (ICTs), the way we live and communicate with each other is changing rapidly. As urban environments continue to evolve, the smart sustainable city (SSC) has sparked considerable attention. We are hoping for a new era in which numerous devices and machines including vehicles, sensors, and robots are all connected to communicate, respond, and operate in real time. The next-generation communication system, the sixth generation (6G), is expected to play a crucial role in improving the efficiency of urban operations and services. In this paper, we first provide the recent trends and key features of standardization in the SSC. To make the future SSC, we highlight key candidate technologies of 6G such as non-terrestrial networks, advanced mobile edge computing, vision-aided wireless communication, artificial intelligence (AI)-based wireless communication, and integrated sensing and communication. We put forth the main technical challenges given to each prime technology along with the potential benefits to pave the way for 6G-enabled SSC. We further address how the potential benefits of prime technologies enable various urban practice cases for 6G-enabled SSC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of mobile edge computing (MEC) has facilitated the development of data caching technology, which enables application vendors to cache frequently used data on the edge servers close to the user, thereby providing low-latency data access services. However, in an unstable MEC environment, the multi-replica data cached by different edge servers is prone to corruption, making it crucial to verify the consistency of multi-replica data on different edge servers. Although the existing research realizes data integrity verification based on the cooperation of multiple edge servers, the integrity proof generated by multiple copies of data is the same, which has low verification efficiency and is vulnerable to attacks such as replay and replace. To address the above issues, based on homomorphic hash and sampling algorithms, this paper proposes an efficient and lightweight multi-replica integrity verification algorithm, which has significantly less storage cost and computational cost and can resist forgery and replay and replace attacks. Based on the verification algorithm, this paper further proposes a multi-replica edge data integrity collaborative audit scheme EDI-C based on the reputation model. EDI-C realizes the efficient collaborative audit of multiple edge servers in a distributed discrete environment through an incentive mechanism to avoid the trust problem of both sides caused by centralized audit. Also, it supports batch auditing of multiple copies of original data files at the same time through parallel processing and data block auditing technology, which not only significantly improves the verification efficiency but also realizes the accurate location and repair of corrupted data at the data block level. Finally, the security analyses and performance evaluation show the security and practicability of EDI-C. Compared with the representative schemes, the results show that EDI-C can ensure the integrity verification of cached data more efficiently in an MEC environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile edge computing (MEC) integration with 5G/6G technologies is an essential direction in mobile communications and computing. However, it is crucial to be aware of the potential privacy implications of task offloading in MEC scenarios, specifically the leakage of user location information. To address this issue, this paper proposes a location-privacy-preserved task offloading (LPTO) scheme based on safe reinforcement learning to balance computational cost and privacy protection. This scheme uses the differential privacy technique to perturb the user's actual location to achieve location privacy protection. We model the privacy-preserving location perturbation problem as a Markov decision process (MDP), and we develop a safe deep Q-network (DQN)-based LPTO (SDLPTO) scheme to select the offloading policy and location perturbation policy dynamically. This approach effectively mitigates the selection of high-risk state–action pairs by conducting a risk assessment for each state–action pair. Simulation results show that the proposed SDLPTO scheme has a lower computational cost and location privacy leakage than the benchmarks. These results highlight the significance of our approach in protecting user location privacy while achieving improved performance in MEC environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) has revolutionized the landscape of the telecommunication industry by offering low-latency, high-bandwidth, and real-time processing. With this advancement comes a broad range of security challenges, the most prominent of which is Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, which threaten the availability and performance of MEC's services. In most cases, Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs), a security tool that monitors networks and systems for suspicious activity and notify administrators in real time of potential cyber threats, have relied on shallow Machine Learning (ML) models that are limited in their abilities to identify and mitigate DDoS attacks. This article highlights the drawbacks of current IDS solutions, primarily their reliance on shallow ML techniques, and proposes a novel hybrid Autoencoder–Multi-Layer Perceptron (AE–MLP) model for intrusion detection as a solution against DDoS attacks in the MEC environment. The proposed hybrid AE–MLP model leverages autoencoders' feature extraction capabilities to capture intricate patterns and anomalies within network traffic data. This extracted knowledge is then fed into a Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) network, enabling deep learning techniques to further analyze and classify potential threats. By integrating both AE and MLP, the hybrid model achieves higher accuracy and robustness in identifying DDoS attacks while minimizing false positives. As a result of extensive experiments using the recently released NF-UQ-NIDS-V2 dataset, which contains a wide range of DDoS attacks, our results demonstrate that the proposed hybrid AE–MLP model achieves a high accuracy of 99.98%. Based on the results, the hybrid approach performs better than several similar techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-assisted maritime communication systems have drawn considerable attention due to their potential for broadband maritime communication applications. However, their limited energy resources remains a critical issue in providing long-term data transmission support for maritime applications. In this study, an integrated sea–air–terrestrial communication system was constructed for marine data collection, where several unmanned surface vessels (USVs) are deployed to collect marine data from underwater sensors (UWSs), and a UAV hovers above these USVs as a relay node, transmitting marine data from USVs to an onshore base station (BS). To prolong the lifetime of the UAV relay, mobile edge computing technology is applied in USVs for partial data computing, which reduces the to-be-relayed data volume from UAVs to USVs to onshore BS as well as the relay energy consumption of UAV. A parallel data computing and transmission scheme was developed for simultaneous local data computing and relaying in the proposed system. Accordingly, a UAV energy consumption minimization problem was formulated with constraints on the USV's computational ability, the USV's transmission power budget, the UAV transmission power budget, and the maximum system latency. To effectively solve this nonconvex optimal problem, an energy optimal partial data computing and relaying strategy was constructed by successively optimizing the data partial computational offloading ratio, USV transmit power allocation, and UAV transmit power. Numerical simulations were used to verify the effectiveness of the proposed strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the need for computation-intensive applications in mobile networks requiring more storage, powerful processors, and real-time responses has risen substantially. Vehicular networks play an important role in this ecosystem, as they must support multiple services, such as traffic monitoring or sharing of data involving different aspects of the vehicular traffic. Moreover, new resource-hungry applications have been envisaged, such as autonomous driving or in-cruise entertainment, hence making the demand for computation and storage resources one of the most important challenges in vehicular networks. In this context, Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) has become the key technology to handle these problems by providing cloud-like capabilities at the edge of mobile networks to support delay-sensitive and computation-intensive tasks. In the meantime, researchers have envisaged use of onboard vehicle resources to extend the computing capabilities of MEC systems. This paper presents a comprehensive review of the most recent works related to MEC-assisted vehicular networks, as well as vehicle-assisted MEC systems. We illustrate the MEC system architecture and discuss its deployment in vehicular environments, as well as the key technologies to realize this integration. After that, we review the recent literature by identifying three different areas, i.e.: (i) MEC providing additional resources to vehicles (e.g., for task offloading); (ii) MEC enabling innovative vehicular applications (e.g., platooning), and (iii) vehicular networks providing additional resources to MEC systems. Finally, we discuss open challenges and future research directions, addressing the possible interplays between MEC systems and vehicular networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compared to cloud computing, mobile edge computing (MEC) is a promising solution for delay-sensitive applications due to its proximity to end users. Because of its ability to offload resource-intensive tasks to nearby edge servers, MEC allows a diverse range of compute- and storage-intensive applications to operate on resource-constrained devices. The optimal utilization of MEC can lead to enhanced responsiveness and quality of service, but it requires careful design from the perspective of user-base station association, virtualized resource provisioning, and task distribution. Also, considering the limited exploration of the federation concept in the existing literature, its impacts on the allocation and management of resources still remain not widely recognized. In this paper, we study the network and MEC resource scheduling problem, where some edge servers are federated, limiting resource expansion within the same federations. The integration of network and MEC is crucial, emphasizing the necessity of a joint approach. In this work, we present NAFEOS, a proposed solution formulated as a two-stage algorithm that can effectively integrate association optimization with vertical and horizontal scaling. The Stage-1 problem optimizes the user-base station association and federation assignment so that the edge servers can be utilized in a balanced manner. The following Stage-2 dynamically schedules both vertical and horizontal scaling so that the fluctuating task-offloading demands from users are fulfilled. The extensive evaluations and comparison results show that the proposed approach can effectively achieve optimal resource utilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile edge computing networks (MECNs) based on hierarchical cloud computing have the ability to provide abundant resources to support the next-generation internet of things (IoT) network, which relies on artificial intelligence (AI). To address the instantaneous service and computation demands of IoT entities, AI-based solutions, particularly the deep reinforcement learning (DRL) strategy, have been intensively studied in both the academic and industrial fields. However, there are still many open challenges, namely, the lengthening convergence phenomena of the agent, network dynamics, resource diversity, and mode selection, which need to be tackled. A mixed integer non-linear fractional programming (MINLFP) problem is formulated to maximize computing and radio resources while maintaining quality of service (QoS) for every user's equipment. We adopt the advanced asynchronous advantage actor-critic (A3C) approach to take full advantage of distributed multi-agent-based solutions for achieving energy efficiency in MECNs. The proposed approach, which employs A3C for computing offloading and resource allocation, is shown through numerical results to significantly reduce energy consumption and improve energy efficiency. This method's effectiveness is further shown by comparing it to other benchmarks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data sharing and analyzing among different devices in mobile edge computing is valuable for social innovation and development. The limitation to the achievement of this goal is the data privacy risk. Therefore, existing studies mainly focus on enhancing the data privacy-protection capability. On the one hand, direct data leakage is avoided through federated learning by converting raw data into model parameters for transmission. On the other hand, the security of federated learning is further strengthened by privacy-protection techniques to defend against inference attack. However, privacy-protection techniques may reduce the training accuracy of the data while improving the security. Particularly, trading off data security and accuracy is a major challenge in dynamic mobile edge computing scenarios. To address this issue, we propose a federated-learning-based privacy-protection scheme, FLPP. Then, we build a layered adaptive differential privacy model to dynamically adjust the privacy-protection level in different situations. Finally, we design a differential evolutionary algorithm to derive the most suitable privacy-protection policy for achieving the optimal overall performance. The simulation results show that FLPP has an advantage of 8∼34% in overall performance. This demonstrates that our scheme can enable data to be shared securely and accurately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the development of sixth-generation (6G) mobile networks, the rise of emerging intelligent services has led to a huge increase in traffic. As an important technology to support the development of 6G, mobile edge computing (MEC) effectively meets the ultra-low latency requirements of most emerging services. However, due to the limited processing capacity of edge nodes, overload on any edge node will cause service degradation, interruption, and even node failure, weakening the advantages of MEC and reducing the survivability of the whole network. In this paper, we propose a task offloading scheme based on traffic prediction for node-overload protection to ensure the survivability of the 6G edge networks. We transformed the network survivability guarantee problem into a task offloading problem under the constraint of future available resources based on traffic prediction and developed a particle swarm optimization algorithm based on policy gradient (PSO-PG) to jointly optimize offloading decisions, routing, and computing resource allocation. Simulations verify the effectiveness of our proposed scheme and guarantee the survivability of 6G edge networks. Meanwhile, evaluation in multiple scenarios with different node scales has verified the wide applicability of our work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computation-intensive applications offloading is challenging, especially in the designated regions where communication infrastructure is absent or compromised. In this paper, we present a Space–Air–Ground integrated Mobile Edge Computing (SAGiMEC) system for these regions to provide quality computational services, where the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) act as in-fight edge servers to provide low-latency edge computing and the satellite provides resident cloud computing. A joint optimization problem is formulated considering UAV deployment, ground device (GD) access, and computation offloading to minimize the system average response latency. To cope with the problem's complexity, we propose a Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Greedy Strategy (GS)-based algorithm (PSO&GS) to obtain an approximate optimal solution. Extensive simulations validate the convergence of the proposed algorithm. Numerical results show that the proposed approach has excellent convergence, and the system average response latency is about 0.65x–0.85x that of the benchmark algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the face of increasing concerns around privacy and security in the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for mobile edge computing (MEC), this study proposes a novel approach to secure UAV-assisted federated learning. This research integrates a trusted execution environment (TEE) into UAV-assisted federated learning and proposes a robust aggregation algorithm based on cosine distance, denoted as CosAvg. This study further designs and evaluates a TEE-based federated learning model, comparing its resource overhead with other secure aggregation frameworks, like homomorphic encryption (HE) and differential privacy (DP). Experimental results indicate a significant reduction in resource overhead for TEE against DP and HE. Moreover, the proposed CosAvg algorithm demonstrated superior robustness against adversarial scenarios, maintaining high accuracy in the presence of malicious clients. The integration of TEE and the CosAvg algorithm provides a secure and robust solution for UAV-assisted federated learning, effectively defending both gradient inversion attacks and byzantine attacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multi-access edge computing (MEC), based on hierarchical cloud computing, offers abundant resources to support the next-generation Internet of Things network. However, several critical challenges, including offloading methods, network dynamics, resource diversity, and server decision-making, remain open. Regarding offloading, most conventional approaches have neglected or oversimplified multi-MEC server scenarios, fixating on single-MEC instances. This myopic focus fails to adapt to computational offloading during MEC server overload, rendering such methods sub-optimal for real-world MEC deployments. To address this deficiency, we propose a solution that employs a deep reinforcement learning-based soft actor-critic (SAC) approach to compute offloading and facilitate MEC server decision-making in multi-user, multi-MEC server environments. Numerical experiments were conducted to evaluate the performance of our proposed solution. The results demonstrate that our approach significantly reduces latency, enhances energy efficiency, and achieves rapid and stable convergence, thereby highlighting the algorithm's superior performance over existing methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By enabling a satellite network with edge computing capabilities, satellite edge computing(SEC) provides users with a full range of computing service. In this paper, we construct a multi-objective optimization model for task offloading with data-dependent constraints in an SEC network and aim to achieve optimal tradeoffs among energy consumption, cost, and makespan. However, dependency constraints between tasks may lead to unexpected computational delays and even task failures in an SEC network. To solve this, we proposed a Petri-net-based constraint amending method with polynomial complexity and generated offloading results satisfying our constraints. For the multiple optimization objectives, a strengthened dominance relation sort was established to balance the convergence and diversity of nondominated solutions. Based on these, we designed a multi-objective wolf pack search (MOWPS) algorithm. A series of adaptive mechanisms was employed for avoiding additional computational overhead, and a Lamarckian-learning-based multi-neighborhood search prevents MOWPS from becoming trapped in the local optimum. Extensive computational experiments demonstrate the outperformance of MOWPS for solving task offloading with data-dependent constraints in an SEC network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile edge computing has been an important computing paradigm for providing delay-sensitive and computation-intensive services to mobile users. In this paper, we study the problem of the joint optimization of task assignment and energy management in a mobile-server-assisted edge computing network, where mobile servers can provide assisted task offloading services on behalf of the fixed servers at the network edge. The design objective is to minimize the system delay. As far as we know, our paper presents the first work that improves the quality of service of the whole system from a long-term aspect by prolonging the operational time of assisted mobile servers. We formulate the system delay minimization problem as a mixed-integer programming (MIP) problem. Due to the NP-hardness of this problem, we propose a dynamic energy criticality avoidance-based delay minimization ant colony algorithm (EACO), which strives for a balance between delay minimization for offloaded tasks and operational time maximization for mobile servers. We present a detailed algorithm design and deduce its computational complexity. We conduct extensive simulations, and the results demonstrate the high performance of the proposed algorithm compared to the benchmark algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The limited coverage extension of mobile edge computing (MEC) necessitates exploring cooperation with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) to leverage advanced features for future computation-intensive and mission-critical applications. Moreover, the workflow for task offloading in software-defined networking (SDN)-enabled 5G is significant to tackle in UAV-MEC networks. In this paper, deep reinforcement learning (DRL) SDN control methods for improving computing resources are proposed. DRL-based SDN controller, termed DRL-SDNC, allocates computational resources, bandwidth, and storage based on task requirements, upper-bound tolerable delays, and network conditions, using the UAV system architecture for task exchange between MECs. DRL-SDNC configures rule installation based on state observations and agent evaluation indicators, such as network congestion, user equipment computational capabilities, and energy efficiency. This paper also proposes the training deep network architecture for the DRL-SDNC, enabling interactive and autonomous policy enforcement. The agent learns from the UAV-MEC environment through experience gathering and updates its parameters using optimization methods. DRL-SDNC collaboratively adjusts hyperparameters and network architecture to enhance learning efficiency. Compared with baseline schemes, simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in optimizing resource efficiency and achieving satisfied quality of service for efficient utilization of computing and communication resources in UAV-assisted networking environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the surge in tasks for in-vehicle terminals, the resulting network congestion and time delay cannot meet the service needs of users. Offloading algorithms are introduced to handle vehicular tasks, which will greatly improve the above problems. In this paper, the dependencies of vehicular tasks are represented as directed acyclic graphs, and network slices are integrated within the edge server. The Dynamic Selection Slicing-based Offloading Algorithm for in-vehicle tasks in MEC (DSSO) is proposed. First, a computational offloading model for vehicular tasks is established based on available resources, wireless channel state, and vehicle loading level. Second, the solution of the model is transformed into a Markov decision process, and the combination of the DQN algorithm and Dueling Network from deep reinforcement learning is used to select the appropriate slices and dynamically update the optimal offloading strategy for in-vehicle tasks in the effective interval. Finally, an experimental environment is set up to compare the DSSO algorithm with LOCAL, MINCO, and DJROM, the results show that the system energy consumption of DSSO algorithm resources is reduced by 10.31%, the time latency is decreased by 22.75%, and the ratio of dropped tasks is decreased by 28.71%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the rocketing development of the Internet of Vehicles (IoV), the growth of computing-intensive and latency-sensitive applications brings a challenge to individual vehicles with limited computing resources. The computation offloading technology provides a feasible solution to this issue. In this paper, a multi-tier symmetric Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) network framework is proposed, which consists of vehicle nodes (VNs), mobile edge computing (MEC) servers and a cloud server to provide computation offloading services for user vehicles. In this symmetric system, besides local computation, tasks can be offloaded to VNs or MEC servers or cloud servers for processing. The computation offloading problem in this network framework is considered as a game based on game theory. Then, in order to achieve the Nash equilibrium (NE) in this game, a joint optimization of computation offloading and resource allocation (JOCORA) algorithm is proposed. The numerical simulations show that the JOCORA algorithm can improve the success probability of offloading and reduce the total latency. The JOCORA algorithm has a better performance compared to other methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA) has recently received attention due to its benefits in both spectral and energy efficiencies. In this paper, we propose a hybrid RSMA-time-division multiple access (TDMA) scheme for a mobile edge computing (MEC) system, where two edge users need to offload their task data to a MEC server. In the proposed scheme, the offloading time is divided into two time phases. Specifically, we design a cognitive radio (CR)-inspired RSMA scheme, in which two users, namely the primary user and secondary user, offload their task data to the MEC server in the first time phase, while only a single user can offload task data in the second time phase. With the aim of minimizing the overall offloading delay, we formulate the offloading delay minimization problem subject to the transmit power and total energy constraints. We transform the original fractional programming non-convex problem to a convex one by using the Dinkelbach transform and propose Dinkelbach and Newton iterative algorithms to determine the optimal transmit power allocation. Specifically, we establish the optimization criteria for the three offloading schemes and derive the corresponding closed-form expressions for the optimal power allocation. Compared to the existing offloading schemes, the numerical results show that the proposed hybrid RSMA-TDMA scheme in scenarios where having a limited energy budget is superior in offloading delay compared to other offloading schemes and the sum offloading delay tends to a constant with the increase in the energy budget. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]