Mobility and Privacy-aware Computation Offloading with Energy Harvesting in MEC-enabled Networks

Many new IoT applications have emerged with the fast evolution of 5G and the Internet of Things (IoT). These applications place higher demands on network energy consumption and processing capabilities. Mobile edge computing (MEC) significantly enhances execution efficiency, while energy harvesting (EH) modules further augment the operational features of IoT devices. However, existing studies mainly concentrate on energy consumption and latency problems, often neglecting issues about user mobility and potential privacy leakage within the MEC environment. Therefore, optimizing computation offloading and resource allocation for MEC-enabled IoT networks is essential. This work proposes an innovative architecture with EH for collaborative computing between multiple mobile devices (MDs) and MEC servers. To tackle the problem, this work also proposes an advanced hybrid algorithm named Self-adaptive Bat Optimizer with Genetic operations and individual update of Grey wolf optimizer (SBG2). With SBG2, this work aims to minimize the energy consumption of MDs while providing user mobility and privacy protection. Simulation experiments show that SBG2 reduces energy consumption by 79.15%, 93.20%, and 89.58%, respectively, compared to the other three typical algorithms.

I. Introduction

The rapid growth and extensive use of the Internet of Things (IoTs) significantly increase global mobile data traffic and the number of mobile devices (MDs) [1]. This neces-sitates the development of new wireless infrastructure to support large-scale MDs [2]. The emerging IoT applications require high computational resources and are also sensitive to latency [3]. This imposes greater demands on MDs' computing and power capacities [4]. Mobile edge computing (MEC) has become an essential approach to solving the above problem. MDs can offload complex computing tasks to nearby MEC servers, effectively supporting compute-intensive and latency-sensitive tasks. The energy harvesting (EH) module boosts the operational capabilities of IoT de-vices, replacing finite batteries to achieve sustainable power supply. The EH module can collect and convert energy from the environment to supply electronic devices or sensors, achieving self-sufficiency or extending device runtime.