User Cooperation for NOMA-Based Mobile Edge Computing

In this paper, we propose a non-orthogonal multiple-access (NOMA)-based cooperative computing scheme in a basic three-node mobile edge computing (MEC) system consisting of a user, a helper and an access point (AP). In particular, the user can simultaneously offload partial data of its computation task to the helper and the AP using NOMA. The helper can locally compute the received data from the user and the partial data of its own task, in parallel with offloading its rest data to the AP. The proposed cooperative computing scheme is a win-win strategy that benefits both the user and helper. The energy consumption minimization problem is studied by joint communication and computation resource sharing of the user and helper subject to a latency constraint. This problem is non-convex and we find the optimal solution by some proper mathematical methods. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme compared with the benchmark schemes.