Bayesian Optimization for Online Management in Dynamic Mobile Edge Computing

TL;DR

This paper introduces Bayesian optimization methods for online resource management in mobile edge computing systems, effectively handling unknown energy-delay costs without explicit system models, and demonstrating improved performance over existing benchmarks.

Contribution

It develops novel BO-based algorithms for online MEC management that operate with bandit feedback and no explicit cost functions, incorporating temporal and contextual information.

Findings

Proposed BO methods outperform benchmarks in simulations.

Effective handling of unknown energy-delay costs.

Adaptability to different MEC network sizes.

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed the emergence of mobile edge computing (MEC), on the premise of a cost-effective enhancement in the computational ability of hardware-constrained wireless devices (WDs) comprising the Internet of Things (IoT). In a general multi-server multi-user MEC system, each WD has a computational task to execute and has to select binary (off)loading decisions, along with the analog-amplitude resource allocation variables in an online manner, with the goal of minimizing the overall energy-delay cost (EDC) with dynamic system states. While past works typically rely on the explicit expression of the EDC function, the present contribution considers a practical setting, where in lieu of system state information, the EDC function is not available in analytical form, and instead only the function values at queried points are revealed. Towards tackling such a challenging online combinatorial problem with only bandit information, novel Bayesian optimization (BO) based approaches are put forth by leveraging the multi-armed bandit (MAB) framework. Per time slot, the discrete offloading decisions are first obtained via the MAB method, and the analog resource allocation variables are subsequently optimized using the BO selection rule. By exploiting both temporal and contextual information, two novel BO approaches, termed time-varying BO and contextual time-varying BO, are developed. Numerical tests validate the merits of the proposed BO approaches compared with contemporary benchmarks under different MEC network sizes.