Workload Distribution with Rateless Encoding: A Low-Latency Computation Offloading Method within Edge Networks

TL;DR

This paper proposes REDC, a rateless encoding-based workload distribution strategy for mobile edge networks that adaptively manages heterogeneity and failures, significantly reducing latency and improving resource utilization.

Contribution

The paper introduces a systematic, adaptive encoding and workload distribution framework that considers node heterogeneity and dynamic failures in edge networks.

Findings

Reduces task execution delays in edge networks.

Maintains high resource utilization under node failures.

Demonstrates resilience and efficiency through experiments.

Abstract

This paper introduces REDC, a comprehensive strategy for offloading computational tasks within mobile Edge Networks (EN) to Distributed Computing (DC) after Rateless Encoding (RE). Despite the efficiency, reliability, and scalability advantages of distributed computing in ENs, straggler-induced latencies and failures pose significant challenges. Coded distributed computing has gained attention for its efficient redundancy computing, alleviating the impact of stragglers. Yet, current research predominantly focuses on tolerating a predefined number of stragglers with minimal encoding redundancy. Furthermore, nodes within edge networks are characterized by their inherent heterogeneity in computation, communication, and storage capacities, and unpredictable straggler effects and failures. To our knowledge, existing encoding offloading approaches lack a systematic design and unified consideration of these characteristics. REDC addresses these issues by adaptively encoding tasks, then distributing the workload based on node variations. In the face of unpredictability failures, the rateless encoding adaptation provides resilience to dynamic straggler effects. Considering the node heterogeneity and system status, tasks are offloaded to optimal subset "valid" nodes. Load distribution decisions are made based on updates to queuing theory modeling through state feedback. The REDC framework is applicable to EN by improving resource utilization and reducing task sequence execution delays. Experimental results demonstrate our method's effectiveness and resilient performance, maintaining efficacy even in the presence of unstable nodes.