Markov Approximation for Task Offloading and Computation Scaling in Mobile Edge Computing

Mobile edge computing (MEC) provides cloud-computing services for mobile devices to offload intensive computation tasks to the physically proximal MEC servers. In this paper, we consider a multiserver system where a single mobile device asks for computation offloading to multiple nearby servers. We formulate this offloading problem as the joint optimization of computation task assignment and CPU frequency scaling, in order to minimize a tradeoff between task execution time and mobile energy consumption. The resulting optimization problem is combinatorial in essence, and the optimal solution generally can only be obtained by exhaustive search with extremely high complexity. Leveraging the Markov approximation technique, we propose a light-weight algorithm that can provably converge to a bounded near-optimal solution. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm is able to generate near-optimal solutions and outperform other benchmark algorithms.