Single-Cell Multiuser Computation Offloading in Dynamic Pricing-Aided Mobile Edge Computing

Along with emerging mobile Internet applications embedded in tremendous growth of computing demand, mobile edge computing (MEC) could effectively address the issue of compute-intensive and latency-sensitive computation imposed on mobile terminals through performing computation offloading strategies. However, how to find optimal decisions of transmission power, computing capacity demand, and offloading demand at the end-user and how to determine the resource pricing and allocation at the MEC server with the limited computing capacity still remain challenging issues in operating the MEC system in an optimal fashion. For multiuser in signal cell network with MEC, a dynamic pricing-based computation offloading solution is investigated in this article. Through the use of Q-learning algorithm comprehensively considering those sensitive factors, e.g., time cost, energy consumption and dynamic pricing, the offloading decision at the end-user is achieved with the consideration of time-varying wireless channel conditions. According to the resources supply and demand relationship, a dynamic pricing algorithm for the MEC server is designed to adjust the pricing strategy to achieve the win–win situation. Simulation results have been shown to demonstrate the efficiency in making offloading decision while the wireless channel is fast fading and the resource pricing is adjusted dynamically, and in enhancing utilities for both end-users and the MEC server.