Probabilistic computation offloading and data caching assisted by mobile-edge-computing–enabled base stations

Mobile edge computing can augment the capabilities of mobile terminals (MTs) by enabling computing and caching functionalities for base stations (BSs). Because BSs have only limited computation and storage resources compared with cloud servers, they need to efficiently manage the computation offloading and data caching for MTs. In this paper, a novel scheme for efficient computation offloading and data caching assisted by mobile-edge-computing–enabled BSs (MEC-BSs) is proposed. To maximize the MT benefits in terms of reduced time and energy consumption, our scheme determines the probability that each MT offloads each type of its tasks to the MEC-BS and indicates whether the cloud data for each type of MT task is cached at the MEC-BS. A balance factor is used to flexibly adjust the tendency of the optimization between the minimization of time and energy consumption. Based on the stable probabilistic characteristics of MT tasks and the MEC-BS service, the optimization algorithm of our scheme can be executed independently and concurrently without deteriorating the system performance. The simulation results demonstrate that our scheme can largely improve the system performance and that it always outperforms other reference schemes in scenarios with multiple criteria.