A Learning-Guided Meta-Heuristic Approach for Task Offloading in Four-Tier IoT Networks: A Hybrid UCB-ACO Algorithm

Abstract

The rapid development and expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem require managing increasing computational demands with the aid of advanced hierarchical architectures. The integration of a complete four-tier hierarchy—including Mobile, Edge, Fog, and Cloud layers—and the priority requirements are being overlooked in the literature despite the effort of existing studies. The goal of this study is to fill these gaps by proposing a novel, context-aware task-offloading framework designed for multi-dimensional ecosystems involving multi-server and multi-application environments. A targeted biomimetic approach is utilized at the core of this research. The decentralized foraging behavior of biological swarms is translated into a concrete engineering solution. This solution is designed specifically for computational offloading and resource management. To achieve this, a “Learning-guided Meta-heuristic” hybrid model is developed. Within this framework, bio-inspired Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is directly integrated with an Upper Confidence Bound (UCB)-inspired exploration mechanism. Natural, pheromone-based imitation is solely relied upon by traditional biomimetic algorithms. In contrast, higher-order cognitive learning is fully incorporated by this hybrid synergy. Consequently, underlying system dynamics are adaptively learned. Local minima traps are also successfully avoided. This avoidance is achieved by dynamically selecting the optimal layer for each individual task. Both energy consumption and latency are optimized simultaneously. Meanwhile, strict operational feasibility is ensured through a dynamic penalty-based mechanism. Battery and deadline constraints are explicitly handled by this mechanism. Extensive simulations demonstrate the superiority of the proposed UCB-ACO model over state-of-the-art meta-heuristics, including Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), Gray Wolf Optimizer (GWO), ACO, Artificial Bee Colony Optimization (ABO), and Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (NSGA-II). The findings reveal that the proposed framework outperforms the methods compared by achieving 22.5% lower latency and 23% lower energy consumption. This study effectively maps the current literature and then introduces a pioneering solution for next-generation resource management in distributed computing.