Abstract
The processing of large volumes of data sets unprecedented demands on the computing power of devices, and it is evident that resource-constrained mobile devices struggle to satisfy the need. As a distributed computing paradigm, edge computing can release mobile devices from computation-intensive tasks, reducing the strain and improving processing efficiency. Traditional offloading methods are less adaptable and do not work in some harsh settings. We simplify the problem to binary offloading decisions in this research and offer a new Asynchronous Update Reinforcement Learning-based Offloading (ARLO) algorithm. The method employs a distributed learning strategy, with five sub-networks and a central public network. Each sub-network has the same structure, as they interact with their environment to learn and update the public network. The sub-network pulls the parameters of the central public network every once in a while. Each sub-network has an experienced pool that minimizes data correlation and is particularly successful in preventing situations where the model falls into a local optimum solution. The main reason for using asynchronous multithreading is that it allows multiple threads to learn the strategy simultaneously, making the learning process faster. At the same time, when the model is trained, five threads can run simultaneously and can handle tasks from different users. The results of simulations show that the algorithm is adaptive and can make optimized offloading decisions on time, even in a time-varying Internet environment, with a significant increase in computational efficiency compared to traditional methods and other reinforcement learning methods.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to sincerely thank the editor and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions to improve the quality of this work.
This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant no. 60971088) and the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (Grant no. ZR2021MF013).
Funding
This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant no. 60971088) and the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (Grant no. ZR2021MF013).
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Zhibin Liu and Yuhan Liu contributed to the conception of the study; Yuhan Liu and Zhenyou Zhou performed the experiment; Zhibin Liu, Yuhan Liu, and Xinshui Wang contributed significantly to the analysis and manuscript preparation; Zhibin Liu, Yuhan Liu, and Xinshui Wang performed the data analyses and wrote the manuscript; Yuxia Lei helped perform the analysis with constructive discussions.
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Liu, Z., Liu, Y., Lei, Y. et al. ARLO: An asynchronous update reinforcement learning-based offloading algorithm for mobile edge computing. Peer-to-Peer Netw. Appl. 16, 1468–1480 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12083-023-01490-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12083-023-01490-0