Stacked Auto Encoder Based Deep Reinforcement Learning for Online Resource Scheduling in Large-Scale MEC Networks

An online resource scheduling framework is proposed for minimizing the sum of weighted task latency for all the Internet-of-Things (IoT) users, by optimizing offloading decision, transmission power, and resource allocation in the large-scale mobile-edge computing (MEC) system. Toward this end, a deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based solution is proposed, which includes the following components. First, a related and regularized stacked autoencoder (2r-SAE) with unsupervised learning is applied to perform data compression and representation for high-dimensional channel quality information (CQI) data, which can reduce the state space for DRL. Second, we present an adaptive simulated annealing approach (ASA) as the action search method of DRL, in which an adaptive h -mutation is used to guide the search direction and an adaptive iteration is proposed to enhance the search efficiency during the DRL process. Third, a preserved and prioritized experience replay (2p-ER) is introduced to assist the DRL to train the policy network and find the optimal offloading policy. The numerical results are provided to demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can achieve near-optimal performance while significantly decreasing the computational time compared with existing benchmarks

Joint Optimization of Deployment and Trajectory in UAV and IRS-Assisted IoT Data Collection System

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can be applied in many Internet of Things (IoT) systems, e.g., smart farms, as a data collection platform. However, the UAV-IoT wireless channels may be occasionally blocked by trees or high-rise buildings. An intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) can be applied to improve the wireless channel quality by smartly reflecting the signal via a large number of low-cost passive reflective elements. This article aims to minimize the energy consumption of the system by jointly optimizing the deployment and trajectory of the UAV. The problem is formulated as a mixed-integer-and-nonlinear programming (MINLP), which is challenging to address by the traditional solution, because the solution may easily fall into the local optimal. To address this issue, we propose a joint optimization framework of deployment and trajectory (JOLT), where an adaptive whale optimization algorithm (AWOA) is applied to optimize the deployment of the UAV, and an elastic ring self-organizing map (ERSOM) is introduced to optimize the trajectory of the UAV. Specifically, in AWOA, a variable-length population strategy is applied to find the optimal number of stop points, and a nonlinear parameter a and a partial mutation rule are introduced to balance the exploration and exploitation. In ERSOM, a competitive neural network is also introduced to learn the trajectory of the UAV by competitive learning, and a ring structure is presented to avoid the trajectory intersection. Extensive experiments are carried out to show the effectiveness of the proposed JOLT framework.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, 4 table

Deep learning based joint resource scheduling algorithms for hybrid MEC networks

In this paper, we consider a hybrid mobile edge computing (H-MEC) platform, which includes ground stations (GSs), ground vehicles (GVs) and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAVs), all with mobile edge cloud installed to enable user equipments (UEs) or Internet of thing (IoT) devices with intensive computing tasks to offload. Our objective is to obtain an online offloading algorithm to minimize the energy consumption of all the UEs, by jointly optimizing the positions of GVs and UAVs, user association and resource allocation in real-time, while considering the dynamic environment. To this end, we propose a hybrid deep learning based online offloading (H2O) framework where a large-scale path-loss fuzzy c-means (LSFCM) algorithm is first proposed and used to predict the optimal positions of GVs and UAVs. Secondly, a fuzzy membership matrix U-based particle swarm optimization (U-PSO) algorithm is applied to solve the mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) problems and generate the sample datasets for the deep neural network (DNN) where the fuzzy membership matrix can capture the small-scale fading effects and the information of mutual interference. Thirdly, a DNN with the scheduling layer is introduced to provide user association and computing resource allocation under the practical latency requirement of the tasks and limited available computing resource of H-MEC. In addition, different from traditional DNN predictor, we only input one UE’s information to the DNN at one time, which will be suitable for the scenarios where the number of UE is varying and avoid the curse of dimensionality in DNN

Large AI Model Empowered Multimodal Semantic Communications

Multimodal signals, including text, audio, image and video, can be integrated into Semantic Communication (SC) for providing an immersive experience with low latency and high quality at the semantic level. However, the multimodal SC has several challenges, including data heterogeneity, semantic ambiguity, and signal fading. Recent advancements in large AI models, particularly in Multimodal Language Model (MLM) and Large Language Model (LLM), offer potential solutions for these issues. To this end, we propose a Large AI Model-based Multimodal SC (LAM-MSC) framework, in which we first present the MLM-based Multimodal Alignment (MMA) that utilizes the MLM to enable the transformation between multimodal and unimodal data while preserving semantic consistency. Then, a personalized LLM-based Knowledge Base (LKB) is proposed, which allows users to perform personalized semantic extraction or recovery through the LLM. This effectively addresses the semantic ambiguity. Finally, we apply the Conditional Generative adversarial networks-based channel Estimation (CGE) to obtain Channel State Information (CSI). This approach effectively mitigates the impact of fading channels in SC. Finally, we conduct simulations that demonstrate the superior performance of the LAM-MSC framework.Comment: To be submitted for journal publicatio

LAMBO: Large Language Model Empowered Edge Intelligence

Next-generation edge intelligence is anticipated to bring huge benefits to various applications, e.g., offloading systems. However, traditional deep offloading architectures face several issues, including heterogeneous constraints, partial perception, uncertain generalization, and lack of tractability. In this context, the integration of offloading with large language models (LLMs) presents numerous advantages. Therefore, we propose an LLM-Based Offloading (LAMBO) framework for mobile edge computing (MEC), which comprises four components: (i) Input embedding (IE), which is used to represent the information of the offloading system with constraints and prompts through learnable vectors with high quality; (ii) Asymmetric encoderdecoder (AED) model, which is a decision-making module with a deep encoder and a shallow decoder. It can achieve high performance based on multi-head self-attention schemes; (iii) Actor-critic reinforcement learning (ACRL) module, which is employed to pre-train the whole AED for different optimization tasks under corresponding prompts; and (iv) Active learning from expert feedback (ALEF), which can be used to finetune the decoder part of the AED while adapting to dynamic environmental changes. Our simulation results corroborate the advantages of the proposed LAMBO framework.Comment: To be submitted for possible journal publicatio

Large AI Model-Based Semantic Communications

Semantic communication (SC) is an emerging intelligent paradigm, offering solutions for various future applications like metaverse, mixed-reality, and the Internet of everything. However, in current SC systems, the construction of the knowledge base (KB) faces several issues, including limited knowledge representation, frequent knowledge updates, and insecure knowledge sharing. Fortunately, the development of the large AI model provides new solutions to overcome above issues. Here, we propose a large AI model-based SC framework (LAM-SC) specifically designed for image data, where we first design the segment anything model (SAM)-based KB (SKB) that can split the original image into different semantic segments by universal semantic knowledge. Then, we present an attention-based semantic integration (ASI) to weigh the semantic segments generated by SKB without human participation and integrate them as the semantic-aware image. Additionally, we propose an adaptive semantic compression (ASC) encoding to remove redundant information in semantic features, thereby reducing communication overhead. Finally, through simulations, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the LAM-SC framework and the significance of the large AI model-based KB development in future SC paradigms.Comment: Plan to submit it to journal for possible publicatio

Distributed Resource Scheduling for Large-Scale MEC Systems: A Multi-Agent Ensemble Deep Reinforcement Learning with Imitation Acceleration

In large-scale mobile edge computing (MEC) systems, the task latency and energy consumption are important for massive resource-consuming and delay-sensitive Internet of things devices (IoTDs). Against this background, we propose a distributed intelligent resource scheduling (DIRS) framework to minimize the sum of task latency and energy consumption for all IoTDs, which can be formulated as a mixed integer nonlinear programming. The DIRS framework includes centralized training relying on the global information and distributed decision making by each agent deployed in each MEC server. Specifically, we first introduce a novel multi-agent ensemble-assisted distributed deep reinforcement learning (DRL) architecture, which can simplify the overall neural network structure of each agent by partitioning the state space and also improve the performance of a single agent by combining decisions of all the agents. Secondly, we apply action refinement to enhance the exploration ability of the proposed DIRS framework, where the near-optimal state-action pairs are obtained by a novel Levy flight search. Finally, an imitation acceleration scheme is presented to pre-train all the agents, which can significantly accelerate the learning process of the proposed framework through learning the professional experience from a small amount of demonstration data. The simulation results in three typical scenarios demonstrate that the proposed DIRS framework is efficient and outperforms the existing benchmark schemes

AI Driven Heterogeneous MEC System with UAV Assistance for Dynamic Environment: Challenges and Solutions

By taking full advantage of Computing, Communication and Caching (3C) resources at the network edge, Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) is envisioned as one of the key enablers for next generation networks. However, current fixed-lo-cation MEC architecture may not be able to make real-time decision in dynamic environments, especially in large-scale scenarios. To address this issue, in this article, a Heterogeneous MEC (H-MEC) architecture is proposed, which is composed of fixed unit, i.e., Ground Stations (GSs) as well as moving nodes, i.e., Ground Vehicles (GVs) and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), all with 3C resource enabled. The key challenges in H-MEC, i.e., mobile edge node management, real-time decision making, user association and resource allocation along with the possible Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based solutions, are discussed. In addition, the AI-based joint Resource schEduling (ARE) framework with two different AI-based mechanisms, i.e., Deep neural network (DNN)-based and deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based architectures, are proposed. DNN-based solution with online incremental learning applies the global optimizer and therefore has better performance than the DRL-based architecture with online policy updating, but requires longer training time. The simulation results are given to verify the efficiency of our proposed ARE framework