Computation Time Minimized Offloading in NOMA-Enabled Wireless Powered Mobile Edge Computing

Wireless powered mobile edge computing (WP-MEC), which combines mobile edge computing (MEC) and wireless power transfer (WPT), is a promising paradigm for coping with the computing power and energy constraints of wireless devices. However, how to realize the online optimal offloading decision and resource allocation in the WP-MEC system is very challenging. This paper studies the system computation completion time (SCCT) minimization problems for WP-MEC networks using non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) communication under binary and partial offloading modes. Due to the complexity of the optimization problems and the time-varying nature of the channel state information, we decouple the original problems into a top-problem of optimizing WPT duration and a sub-problem of optimizing resource allocation, and then propose a convolutional deep reinforcement learning online (CDRO) algorithm. For the top-problem, a deep reinforcement learning framework is used to obtain the near-optimal WPT duration, and an incremental exploration policy is designed to balance the exploration accuracy and exploration range to improve the convergence performance of the CDRO algorithm. For the sub-problems, we propose their corresponding low-complexity algorithms based on in-depth analysis and derivation of the optimal offloading decision’s properties. Finally, numerical results show that the proposed CDRO algorithm achieves near-optimal SCCT with low computational complexity, enabling online decision-making in time-varying channel environments.