Minimum-Cost Offloading for Collaborative Task Execution of MEC-Assisted Platooning

Sensors (Basel). 2019 Feb 18;19(4):847. doi: 10.3390/s19040847.

Abstract

In this paper, we study the offloading decision of collaborative task execution between platoon and Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) server. The mobile application is represented by a series of fine-grained tasks that form a linear topology, each of which is either executed on a local vehicle, offloaded to other members of the platoon, or offloaded to a MEC server. The objective of the design is to minimize the cost of tasks offloading and meets the deadline of tasks execution. The cost minimized task decision problem is transformed into the shortest path problem, which is limited by the deadline of the tasks on a directed acyclic graph. The classical Lagrangian Relaxation-based Aggregated Cost (LARAC) algorithm is adopted to solve the problem approximately. Numerical analysis shows that the scheduling method of the tasks decision can be well applied to the platoon scenario and execute the tasks in cooperation with the MEC server. In addition, compared with task local execution, platoon execution and MEC server execution, the optimal offloading decision for collaborative task execution can significantly reduce the cost of task execution and meet deadlines.

Keywords: collaborative task execution; mobile edge computing; offloading decision; platooning.