Joint Optimization of Uplink Power and Computational Resources in Mobile Edge Computing-Enabled Cell-Free Massive MIMO

TL;DR

This paper explores the integration of cell-free massive MIMO with mobile edge computing, proposing a joint resource allocation scheme that optimizes power and computational resources to enhance spectral efficiency and reduce latency.

Contribution

It introduces a novel MEC-enabled CF-mMIMO architecture with a multi-objective optimization framework and an iterative solution approach for joint radio and computational resource management.

Findings

Proposed resource allocation improves power efficiency and reduces latency.

CF-mMIMO outperforms co-located and small-cell architectures in computation offloading.

Effective support for latency-sensitive applications with energy benefits.

Abstract

The coupling of cell-free massive MIMO (CF-mMIMO) with Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) is investigated in this paper. A MEC-enabled CF-mMIMO architecture implementing a distributed user-centric approach both from the radio and the computational resource allocation perspective is proposed. A multi-objective optimization problem (MOOP) for the joint allocation of radio and remote computational resources is formulated, aimed at striking an optimal balance between total uplink power minimization and sum spectral efficiency maximization, under resource budget and latency constraints. In order to solve such a challenging non-convex problem, we convert the MOOP to an equivalent single-objective optimization problem (SOOP) through the weighted sum method and propose an iterative algorithm based on alternating optimization and sequential convex programming, along with an alternative heuristic resource allocation for distributed networks. Finally, we provide a detailed performance comparison between the proposed MEC-enabled CF-mMIMO architecture with its co-located counterpart, and its small-cell implementation. Numerical results reveal the effectiveness of the proposed resource allocation scheme, under different access point selection strategies, and the natural suitability of CF-mMIMO in supporting computation-offloading applications with benefits over users' transmit power and energy consumption, the effective latency experienced, and the computation offloading efficiency.