Computation Offloading and Resource Allocation for MEC in C-RAN: A Deep Reinforcement Learning Approach

Abstract

Mobile edge computing (MEC) technology has become a promising example for cloud radio access networks (CRAN) to provide close-range services, thereby reducing service delays and saving energy consumption. In this paper, we consider a multi-user MEC system and solve the problem of the computation offloading strategies and resource allocation policies. We set the total cost of delays and energy consumption as our optimization goal. However, getting an optimal strategy in a dynamic environment is challenging. Reinforcement learning (RL) aims at long-term cumulative rewards, which are essential for time-varying dynamic systems. Therefore, we propose an optimization framework based on deep RL to solve these problems. The deep neural network (DNN) is used to estimate the value function of the critics, thereby reducing the state space complexity of the optimization target. The actor part uses another DNN to represent a parametritis stochastic strategy and improve the strategy with the help of critics. Compared with other schemes, the simulation results show that the scheme significantly reduces the total cost.