Bayesian Optimization for Task Offloading and Resource Allocation in Mobile Edge Computing

Recent years have witnessed the emergence of mobile edge computing (MEC), on the premise of a cost-effective enhancement in the computational ability of hardware-constrained wireless devices (WDs) comprising the Internet of Things (IoT). In a general multi-server multi-user MEC system, each WD has a computational task to execute and has to select binary (off)loading decisions, along with the analog-amplitude resource allocation variables in an online manner, with the goal of minimizing the overall energy-delay cost (EDC) with dynamic system states. While past works typically rely on the explicit expression of the EDC function, the present contribution considers a practical setting, where in lieu of system state information, the EDC function is not available in analytical form, and instead only the function values at queried points are revealed. Towards tackling such a challenging online combinatorial problem with only bandit information, novel Bayesian optimization (BO) based approach is put forth by leveraging the multi-armed bandit (MAB) framework. Per time slot, by exploiting temporal information, the discrete offloading decisions are first obtained via the MAB method, and the analog resource allocation variables are subsequently optimized using the BO selection rule. Numerical tests validate the effectiveness of the proposed BO approach.