Sharing is Caring: A Mobile Edge Computing Perspective

TL;DR

This paper explores a spectrum sharing system combining mobile edge computing and 5G technologies, where IoT and licensed spectrum networks cooperate to optimize spectrum use and computational tasks.

Contribution

It introduces a joint optimization framework for spectrum sharing and task offloading in IoT and licensed networks, considering energy and time constraints.

Findings

Spectrum sharing benefits both IoT and licensed networks.

Processor allocation improves IoT task computation rate.

Cooperative relaying enhances spectrum utilization.

Abstract

In this paper, we consider a system model in conjunction with two major technologies in 5G communications, i.e., mobile edge computing and spectrum sharing. An IoT network, which does not have access to any licensed spectrum, carries its computational task offloading activities with help of spectrum sharing. The IoT network cooperates with a licensed spectrum holding network by relaying its data and in return gets access to the licensed spectrum. The licensed spectrum holding network focuses on throughput maximization, whereas, the IoT network tries to maximize task computation rate. We formulate an optimization problem giving importance to both networks' interests. Typical IoT nodes may be energy-constrained, which is considered along with task computation time constraints. Parallel computation is considered while computing IoT nodes' computational tasks at the mobile edge computing server, where the processor is allocated based on IoT nodes' offloading capabilities. The advantage of such processor allocation is shown in the result section. Moreover, we also show how both IoT and licensed spectrum holding networks benefit from the spectrum sharing by caring for each other requirements, which echoes the fact, i.e., Sharing is Caring.