ZHANG et al.: ENERGY-LATENCY TRADEOFF FOR ENERGY-AWARE OFFLOADING IN MEC NETWORKS 2635
Fig. 1. Network model.
small cell eNodeBs (SeNBs) are overlaid by the MeNB. The
SeNBs are connected to the MeNB through wired link [27].
Each SeNB serves up to U
j
(j ∈{1, 2,...,M}) SMDs. In
order to reuse spectrum, we assume that multiple SeNBs
operate in the same frequency band, where the interference
between small cells exists. The bandwidth B is divided into
N channels. SMDs associate with the SeNBs in orthogonal
frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA), where the chan-
nel of each SMD in the same SeNB is orthogonal to others.
In this network, SMD i in SeNB j has a computation task
τ
i,j
={d
i,j
, c
i,j
, T
max
i,j
} to be completed, where d
i,j
is the size
of input data, c
i,j
denotes the total number of CPU cycles
required to accomplish the computation task, and T
max
i,j
denotes
the maximum tolerance latency. For each SMD, its task can
be executed either locally on itself or remotely in the MEC
server via computation offloading. Let s
i,j
be the offloading
decision of SMD i in cell j. If the SMD offloads its task to
the MEC server, s
i,j
= 1, otherwise, s
i,j
= 0.
1) Local Computing: We define f
l
i,j
as the computation abil-
ity (i.e., CPU cycles per second) of the SMD. When the task
τ
i,j
is executed locally on the SMD, the computation execution
time t
L
i,j
is
t
L
i,j
=
c
i,j
f
l
i,j
. (1)
The energy consumption of the SMD can be calculated as
e
L
i,j
= κ(f
l
i,j
)
2
c
i,j
(2)
where κ = 10
−26
, and it is a coefficient depending on the chip
architecture [28], [29].
Considering that f
l
i,j
affects the computation execution time
and energy consumptions simultaneously. It is allowed to
schedule the CPU-cycle frequency via dynamic voltage and
frequency scaling technology [22].
2) Edge Computing: When the input data is transmitted to
the MEC server through SeNB, the transmission expenditure
between the MEC sever and the SeNB is ignored [24], [30].
If the SMD accesses the SeNB on channel n, the achievable
uplink transmission rate can be expressed as
r
i,j,n
= wlog
2
1 +
p
i,j,n
h
i,j,n
σ
2
+ I
i,j,n
(3)
where w is the bandwidth, w = B/N. p
i,j,n
and h
i,j,n
are the
transmission power and the channel gain between the SMD
i and the SeNB j on channel n, respectively. σ
2
is the noise
power. I
i,j,n
denotes the interference of SMD i in cell j suffer-
ing from other SMDs in neighboring cells on the same channel
n, and it can be represented as
I
i,j,n
=
U
l
k=1
M
l=1,l=j
a
k,l,n
p
k,l,n
h
j
k,l,n
(4)
where l is the lth except the jth small cell, h
j
k,l,n
is the channel
gain from SMD k in cell l to cell j on channel n, and U
l
is
the number of SMDs in small cell l. Hence, the total uplink
transmission rate for SMD i in cell j can be obtained as
r
i,j
=
N
n=1
a
i,j,n
r
i,j,n
(5)
where a
i,j,n
∈{0, 1}. a
i,j,n
= 1 denotes the channel n is
assigned to SMD i in cell j to offload its task, otherwise,
a
i,j,n
= 0. Let f
C
denotes the CPU-cycle frequency of the
MEC server, which is fixed for the duration of computation
task execution [17], [22]. Then the total edge computing exe-
cution time of the task includes the transmission time and
computation time on MEC server, which can be given as
t
C
i,j
=
d
i,j
r
i,j
+
c
i,j
f
C
. (6)
The energy consumption of the SMD is expressed as
e
C
i,j
=
N
n=1
a
i,j,n
p
i,j,n
d
i,j
r
i,j
. (7)
Here, the time and energy consumption of outcome from
the MEC server to the SMD are ignored in this case, due to
the fact that the size of outcome data is much smaller than the
size of input data, which is similar to the studies [30], [31].
In the process of task execution, both execution latency and
energy consumption are vital for the SMDs, which attributes
to user experience and the battery energy limitation of SMDs.
In general, a weighting factor w
i,j
(w
i,j
∈ [0, 1]) will be
used to investigate the tradeoff between energy consumption
and latency, which can be defined by different SMDs for
the purpose of meeting the user-specific demands [8], [24].
Saving more energy or reducing latency can be implemented
by adjusting the weighting factor. However, we bring the resid-
ual energy rate r
E
i,j
of the battery into the weighting factor in
our model. It is defined as
w
i,j
= w
i,j
r
E
i,j
(8)
where r
E
i,j
= E
max
i,j
/E
total
. E
max
i,j
is the maximum residual energy
aware of the battery of SMD i in cell j and E
total
is the battery
capacity in Joules [26]. Unlike w
i,j
, r
E
i,j
is a definite value,
which reflects the real-time service condition of the battery.
According to (1) and (2), the overhead of the task locally
computed on SMD i in cell j, namely the weighted sum of
energy consumption and latency G
L
i,j
, can be defined as
G
L
i,j
= w
i,j
t
L
i,j
+ (1 − w
i,j
)αe
L
i,j
(9)
where α is the normalizing factor, which is introduced to
implement the unitless combination of energy consumption