Jun 2026· arXiv.org· Vol abs/2606.26293· 0 citations· 15 references
Computer Science
TL;DR
HALO, a hierarchical auction-assisted learning framework that combines auction-based task association with hierarchical Proximal Policy Optimization for resource allocation, is proposed, highlighting HALO's ability to maintain stable and efficient performance under varying traffic conditions, making it well-suited for delay-sensitive SAGIN environments.
Abstract
In this paper, we investigate delay-aware task offloading and resource scheduling in a three-tier space-air-ground integrated network (SAGIN) consisting of IoT devices, UAV edge nodes, and a high-altitude platform station (HAPS). We formulate joint task association and continuous resource control (including bandwidth, transmit power, and CPU frequency allocation) as a non-convex mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) problem, which is inherently NP-hard. To capture fine-grained system dynamics, we introduce a macro-micro slot model that tracks cumulative transmission and computation progress over time. Based on this model, we propose HALO, a hierarchical auction-assisted learning framework that combines auction-based task association with hierarchical Proximal Policy Optimization (HPPO) for resource allocation. Simulation results under different traffic loads show that HALO consistently outperforms representative deep reinforcement learning (DRL) baselines. In particular, HALO achieves an average improvement of 8.7 percentage points in task success rate over PPO (corresponding to an 11.4% relative gain) and shows consistently greater robustness than DDPG and SAC, with relative improvements of 32.4% and 89.9%, respectively. These results highlight HALO's ability to maintain stable and efficient performance under varying traffic conditions, making it well-suited for delay-sensitive SAGIN environments.
This paper addresses the joint task offloading and resource allocation problem in multi-user MEC systems and proposes a decentralized control framework based on Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL), which achieves lower total system cost and faster convergence than the full-local, full-offload, and heuristic baselines.
Youssef Oukissou, Mohamed Amine Meddaoui, Ayoub Belaidi et al.· International journal of Com...· 0 citations
This work investigates the joint optimization of Age of Information (AoI) and energy harvesting (EH) in wireless edge computing systems, where edge servers not only process IoT data but also act as wireless power suppliers via simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT). Building upon the asynchronous model-free fractional multi-agent reinforcement learning framework and the Lyapunov drift-plus-penalty (DPP) concept, we design a fractional-based reward function for AoI and construct a virtual queue to enforce long-term energy stability under battery storage constraints. The overall reward is formulated as a weighted sum, capturing the trade-off between timeliness and energy sustainability, with update decisions, task offloading, and power splitting ratios as key control variables. Simulation results demonstrate that the developed multi-agent deep reinforcement learning approach achieves superior AoI–energy trade-offs compared to related baseline algorithms. These findings highlight the effectiveness of our framework in balancing information freshness and sustainable energy harvesting under resource-constrained edge environments.
The rapid proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices has placed unprecedented pressure on the network edge, where applications such as augmented reality, real-time analytics, and autonomous navigation demand low latency and tight energy budgets that traditional cloud-centric architectures cannot meet. Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) addresses this gap by relocating computation closer to end users, but the core question of where and how each task should be executed remains open: rulebased and single-objective offloading strategies fail to simultaneously balance service latency, energy efficiency, and user experience under dynamic, large-scale conditions. In this paper we propose TARLOT (Two-Agent Reinforcement Learning Offloading Tasks), a cooperative framework for threetier IoT–MEC–Cloud environments. TARLOT decouples the offloading decision from the resourceallocation problem and assigns each to a dedicated Q-learning agent, so that the two subproblems are specialised independently while still being optimised jointly. The framework is evaluated on PureEdgeSim under heterogeneous IoT workloads, device densities ranging from 200 to 2,400, and diverse application profiles, and is compared against five widely-used baselines (Random, Round-Robin, Trade-Off, Pure-Edge, and Pure-Cloud). At 2,400 devices, TARLOT delivers an average service time of 1.1 s (against 4.3 s for Pure-Cloud), a Quality of Experience of 0.77 (against 0.22 for Pure-Cloud), a task-failure rate below 2 % (against nearly 14 % for Pure-Cloud), and a per-device energy consumption of only 3.6 W (against 11.2 W for Pure-Cloud) — roughly a 68 % reduction. Balanced CPU utilisation across the local, edge, and cloud tiers further confirms that TARLOT prevents resource bottlenecks, establishing it as a practical solution for next-generation large-scale IoT deployments.
Oussama Lagnfdi, Marouane Myyara, A. Darif· International journal of Com...· 0 citations
In today’s world, with the emergence of IoT devices and critical latency applications, there has been an increased demand for intelligent resource management in diverse computing environments [5][10]. Collaborative computing is the integration of cloud and edge computing, while the issue of how to schedule each task for execution is still an open problem. Traditional heuristics like Round Robin and greedy latency reduction are incapable of adapting to the stochastic and non-stationary characteristics of practical workloads [4][14]. In this paper, an intelligent task scheduling mechanism based on Double Deep Q-Network (DDQN) reinforcement learning [2] has been proposed. The agent observes a four-dimensional state encoding task characteristics and selects binary offloading decisions, guided by a shaped reward signal encoding multiple performance objectives. Experimental evaluation on a heterogeneous synthetic benchmark demonstrates that the proposed DDQN scheduler reduces SLA violations by approximately 85% relative to Round Robin and 72% relative to the greedy baseline, while achieving superior energy efficiency. These results confirm that deep reinforcement learning [1][17][18] provides a principled foundation for adaptive resource management in next-generation edge-cloud systems.
Vishakha Makode, Taresh Ayaspure· Journal of Advances in Devel...· 0 citations
The rapid growth of Internet of Vehicles (IoV) applications has imposed strict requirements on low-latency and energy-efficient computing services. This letter investigates a multi-Uncrewed Aerial Vehicle (UAV)-assisted IoV system, where multiple Mobile Edge Computing (MEC)-enabled UAVs (MUs) collaboratively provide computing services for vehicular terminals (VTs). To improve service capability, we propose an energy-efficient task offloading and load balancing scheme that jointly considers vehicle mobility, task offloading and migration, and computing resource allocation to formulate an optimization problem. To solve this problem, a collective learning (CL)-enabled multi-agent reinforcement learning (CL-MARL) algorithm is proposed, where each agent learns optimal policies through centralized training and collective cooperative learning. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme outperforms benchmark strategies in terms of energy efficiency, task completion rate, and load balancing.
Yongbin Wang, Peng Lin, Yan Liu et al.· IEEE Wireless Communications...· 0 citations