DEO: A Smart Dynamic Edge Offloading Scheme Using Processing Resources of Nearby Wireless Devices to Form an Edge Computing Engine

Edge computing reduces connectivity costs and network traffic congestion over cloud computing, by offering local resources (processing and storage) at one hop closer to the end-users. I.e. it reduces the Round-Trip Time (RTT) for offloading part of the processing workload from end-nodes/devices to servers at the edge. However, edge servers are normally pre-setup as part of the overall computing resource infrastructure, which is tough to predict for mobile/IoT deployments. This paper introduces a smart Dynamic Edge Offloading scheme, (we named it DEO), that forms the "edge computing resource" on-the-go, as needed from nearby available devices in a cooperative sharing environment. This is especially necessary for hosting mobile/IoT applications traffic at crowded/urban situations, and, for example, when executing a processing intensive Mobile Cloud Computing Service (MCCS) on a Smartphone (SP). DEO implementation is achieved by using a short-range wireless connectivity between available cooperative end-devices, that will form the edge computing resource. DEO includes an intelligent cloud-based engine, that will facilitate the engagement of the edge network devices. For example, if the end-device is a SP running an MCCS, DEO will partition the processing of the MCCS into sub-tasks, that will be run in parallel on the newly formed "edge resource network" of other nearby devices. Our experiments prove that DEO reduces the RTT and cost overhead by 62.8% and 75.5%, when compared to offloading to a local edge server or a cloud-based server.