Task-Offloading Optimization in Mobile Edge Computing for Smart Library Services

Decentralized Task Offloading for Multi-User Mobile Edge Computing with Machine Learning

A reinforcement learning-based computation offloading strategy using an improved Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (IDDPG) algorithm that outperforms greedy offloading strategies and demonstrates improved efficiency in dynamic MEC environments.

A Cooperative MADRL Approach for Joint Computing Offloading and Route Optimization in Cloud-Edge Networks

M4O: A Novel Task Offloading Framework for High-Density High-Load VEC Networks

Vehicular edge computing (VEC), a key enabler for the Internet of Things (IoT) in intelligent transportation, addresses onboard processing constraints through collaborative task offloading among vehicles, facilitating latency-sensitive applications such as autonomous driving. However, developing efficient offloading strategies remains particularly challenging in high-density vehicular networks, where intensive computational demands coexist with severely constrained intervehicle communication ranges due to signal blockage. To handle this, we propose M4O, a mobility-aware task offloading framework supporting multihop, multiuser, and multitask offloading optimization. M4O intelligently integrates vehicle mobility patterns and enables relay-assisted offloading to enhance system effectiveness and robustness. The framework employs a dual-algorithm approach: the advantage actor–critic (A2C) for indivisible tasks and the hybrid proximal policy optimization (H-PPO) for divisible tasks, both optimized to minimize the temporally coupled composite cost of time and resources. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based solutions of M4O deliver stable and efficient offloading strategies, outperforming existing benchmarks by significant margins in cost efficiency. Our code is available at https://github.com/Zhouym1028/M4O

Cooperative Task Offloading in Mobile Edge Computing via an Improved MASAC Framework

An adaptive Beta-policy and delayed-update multi-agent soft actor-critic method, abbreviated as ABDMASAC, which uses a Beta policy to model bounded actions and achieves a better overall trade-off than the selected MASAC-backbone and on-policy MARL baselines under the considered simulation settings.

MFCO: A Rainbow DQN-Enhanced Mean-Field Approach for Computation Offloading in IIoT Using Mobile Edge Computing

The growing smart devices (SDs) in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) generate complex computations that strain the performance and energy of local processing. Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) addresses this by providing nearby computing resources for low-latency offloading. However, achieving efficient computation offloading under massive device concurrency and densely distributed computation offloadings remains a key challenge. To address this, this paper constructs a multi-server MEC system model for IIoT and introduces Mean-Field Game (MFG) theory to model the offloading competition among SDs. This effectively reduces the dimensionality and complexity of multi-agent interactions. A novel Mean-Field Computation Offloading (MFCO) algorithm is proposed, which combines MFG with Rainbow Deep Q-Network under a Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning framework. By incorporating advanced components such as distributional value estimation, prioritized experience replay, multi-step learning, and dueling architecture, each SD acts as an autonomous agent, optimizing its policy based on local observations and mean-field approximations. Further enhancements include Boltzmann exploration, adaptive learning rates, and a mean Q-network structure, which improve convergence speed and training stability. Extensive simulations on a large-scale IIoT platform (100 SDs, 9 MEC servers) demonstrate that MFCO reduces computation latency and improves long-term rewards while maintaining robust server performance.

Resource Allocation and Task Offloading for MEC-Enabled 6G Networks Using DRL

A new paradigm for satisfying the ever-growing demands of real-time Sixth Generation (6G) applications is Mobile Edge Computing (MEC). Additionally, base stations and Internet of Things devices that incorporate renewable energy harvesting capabilities have the potential to lower grid energy use. To maximize system potential and lower carbon emissions, it is crucial to make effective decisions about job offloading and resource allocation. A carbon-aware MEC architecture that uses both grid and renewable energy sources is proposed in this paper. Our goal is to jointly manage resource allocation and task offloading while monitoring carbon emissions and task queue delays to optimize system behavior under uncertainty, specifically for stochastic workloads and variable renewable generation. To balance these two cost components (emissions and queue length), we create a combined optimization problem. We develop a deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG)-based joint optimization technique to address this issue in a constantly changing environment. In the optimization, we consider greedy policy (GP) and full offloading (FO), as well as time-average carbon emission (TACE) and time-average queue length (TAQL) as performance metrics, and time-average queue length (TAQL) and full execution (FE) as baseline strategies; we also evaluate normalized time-average cumulative reward (NTACR). This method uses continuous-action reinforcement learning to generate efficient, real-time control policies. For the proposed MEC network, numerical statistics show that our approach can lead to effective offloading and lower carbon emissions.