A Novel Robust Reinforcement Learning-based Dependent Task Offloading Algorithm for Mobile Edge Intelligence

With the rise of advanced applications based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet-of-Things (IoT), mobile devices have become more intelligent, introducing a novel concept, Mobile Edge Intelligence. But the limited on-board resources often hinder the capabilities of mobile devices. Mobile Edge Computing (MEC), regarded as an effective method to expand device capability, effectively overcomes this barrier. However, the dynamic networks driven by mobility and the dependency on applications pose significant challenges for offloading, which can degrade MEC’s overall performance. Therefore, how to effectively combine the above points to achieve a stable and effective sharing of computing resources between devices and servers is a critical issue. In this paper, we consider a multi-slot MEC system with device mobility and multiple applications of unknown arrival. To improve application completion rate while reducing task delay, we introduce a novel, robust distributed offloading algorithm, which calls the Multi-Attention Pointer network-based Reinforcement Learning algorithm (MAPRL), for the dynamic and unstable resource offloading scenario. Numerous experiments have been carried out to demonstrate that, compared with the existing methods, MAPRL exhibits robustness when facing the changing scenario, it can adapt to the unknown workload and dynamic network connections to enhance the offloading performance.