Efficient Computation Offloading for Service Workflow of Mobile Applications in Mobile Edge Computing

Edge computing has become a promising solution to overcome the user equipment (UE) constraints such as low computing capacity and limited energy. A key edge computing challenge is providing computing services with low service congestion and low latency, but the computing resources of edge servers were limited. User task randomness and network inhomogeneity brought considerable challenges to limited-resource MEC systems. To solve these problems, the presented paper proposed a blocking- and delay-aware schedule strategy for MEC environment service workflow offloading. First, the workflow was modeled in mobile applications and the buffer queue in servers. Then, the server collaboration area was divided through a collaboration area division method based on clustering. Finally, an improved particle swarm optimization scheduling method was utilized to solve this NP-hard problem. Many simulation results verified the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. This method was superior to existing methods, which effectively reduces the blocking probability and execution delay and ensures the quality of the experience of the user.