Multitask Offloading Strategy for Edge Computing in Time-Sensitive Networking

Abstract

Edge computing is a creative computing paradigm that enhances the computing capacity of the edge device close to the data source. As the key technology of edge computing, task offloading, which can improve the response speed and the stability of the network system, has attracted much attention and has been applied in many network scenarios. However, few studies have considered the application of task offloading in time-sensitive networking (TSN), which is a promising technology that has the potential to guarantee data delivery with bounded latency and low jitter. To this end, we establish a task offloading stream transmission model for TSN based on the queueing theory. With the model, the average response time can be achieved by quantitative calculation. Then, we introduce the backward method to construct a utility function and formulate an exact potential game to model the task offloading competition among edge devices considering the minimization of the average response time of all tasks. Furthermore, a distributed and sequential decision-making algorithm for multitask offloading (DSDA-MO) is proposed to find the Nash equilibrium. Through numerical studies, we evaluate the algorithm performance as well as the benefit of the multitask offloading mechanism. The results reveal that through the proposed game theoretic approach, we can obtain the optimal multitask offloading strategy, which can significantly reduce the task computation delay in TSN, within a finite number of rounds of calculation.