O-DAG is presented, an end-to-end framework that closes the SAGA--simulation gap and evaluates five scheduling algorithms for a slice scheduling application across various configurations spanning 5K--50K UEs, 2--20 cells, and 2--10 network slices.
Abstract
The O-RAN paradigm decomposes intelligent RAN control into pipelines of interdependent AI/ML functions, including traffic prediction, signal quality estimation, and slice scheduling, that must execute across a dispersed continuum of far-edge, near-edge, and cloud resources under heterogeneous latency and bandwidth constraints. Despite the natural expression of these pipelines as Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs), no integrated methodology exists to profile their execution costs, map them onto dispersed infrastructure via scheduling heuristics, and validate the resulting placement under 5G cellular conditions. We present O-DAG, an end-to-end framework that closes this gap through four tightly coupled stages: (1) DagProfiler, a new open-source tool that instruments O-RAN Slice Scheduler and extracts per-task instruction counts and per-edge communication volumes; (2) a parameterized three-tier network topology encoding far-edge (DU, RIC), near-edge (edge), and cloud nodes with realistic link bandwidths; (3) an extension of the SAGA scheduling framework and (4) a custom DAG simulation module built on the MintEDGE simulator. We evaluate five scheduling algorithms (HEFT, MCT, MinMin, MaxMin, Duplex) for a slice scheduling application across various configurations spanning 5K--50K UEs, 2--20 cells, and 2--10 network slices. HEFT achieves the lowest makespan in all configurations, but scheduler rankings are workload-dependent. The SAGA--simulation gap serves as a regime diagnostic: negative gaps (up to -1.72%) identify compute-dominated configurations where HEFT overestimates conservatively, while a positive gap (+0.64%) at low slice counts exposes a communication-bound regime where bandwidth contention exceeds the scheduling model's assumptions. All artifacts are released for reproducibility.
A comprehensive review of Kubernetes scheduling strategies published between January 2023 and January 2026 is presented and a multi-dimensional taxonomy is established that categorizes scheduling approaches based on common objectives, modification methods, optimization methodologies, targeted workloads, evaluation methods, scheduling scopes, and performance metrics.
Mohammed Alhakimi, R. Latip· Computers· 0 citations
Deploying Large Language Models (LLMs) over the edge-cloud continuum faces severe stability challenges due to the conflict between stochastic network topology and complex workflow dependencies. Existing schedulers, relying either on computationally prohibitive Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) or topology-agnostic heuristics, fail to reconcile this tension. To bridge these gaps, we propose STEM, a service-level and topology-aware orchestration framework that formulates distributed LLM serving as a workflow-aware routing problem over a monitored service overlay, in which heterogeneous service instances act as specialized experts. At the core of STEM lies the STAR-PPO algorithm, utilizing a lightweight graph-free perception mechanism. By leveraging Squeeze-and-Excitation attention, it extracts critical bottleneck features from raw telemetry with linear complexity, bypassing the scalability limits of message-passing paradigms. To further achieve Pareto-efficient trade-offs, we develop a Dynamic Weight Adaptation (DWA) mechanism that autonomously recalibrates optimization preferences based on entropy-regularized metric drift. Extensive experiments on real-world datasets spanning 2,000 nodes demonstrate that our framework significantly outperforms state-of-the-art baselines. Specifically, STAR-PPO reduces network transmission costs by 96.8% and improves comprehensive inference efficiency by 24.4%, while sustaining robust zero-shot generalization across regions, with average latency within $1.09\times $ of a target-domain-retrained reference under a strict cross-region protocol. Code and data are available at https://github.com/gymorsiback/STARPPO
Yan Gao, Shaoyuan Huang, Yonghui Ye et al.· IEEE Transactions on Cogniti...· 0 citations
Microservice applications are increasingly deployed across cloud--edge environments, where heterogeneous nodes and time-varying inter-node delays amplify the impact of placement decisions. At the same time, these applications face non-stationary traffic, shifts in the mix of root request operations that exercise different call graphs, and heterogeneous communication modes that determine how network latency and queuing propagate to end-to-end (E2E) performance. Existing autoscalers and network-aware schedulers typically handle only a subset of these dynamics, leading to either compute bottlenecks or inflated cross-node latency and thus SLO violations. We propose ADASCALE, an adaptive framework that jointly scales and places microservice replicas under such multi-dimensional dynamics. ADASCALE implements a Monitor--Analyzer--Planner--Executor (MAPE) loop that extracts per-edge and per-service demand from distributed traces and service-mesh metrics, identifies the most critical root operation under a mixed workload, computes SLO-aware replica targets, and then places replicas to minimize a demand-weighted latency objective given the current inter-node latency matrix. To react quickly to networking perturbations, ADASCALE triggers a reactive placement loop, while a steady-state autoscaling loop handles demand shifts. We evaluate ADASCALE on a cloud--edge Kubernetes cluster using the DeathStarBench Social Network application with three root operations under varying load and workload mixes. Across scenarios, ADASCALE consistently meets SLO targets and improves both latency and throughput: compared with NetMARKS_Scale, it achieves up to 1.56x, 1.93x, and 1.34x lower average response time (for compose-post, read-home-timeline, and read-user-timeline) and up to 2.16x, 1.32x, and 1.36x higher throughput, respectively.
Ming Chen, Muhammed Tawfiqul Islam, M. R. Read et al.· 0 citations
The lack of determinism restricts the integration of safety-critical applications into Edge–Fog–Cloud (EFC) architectures. Existing EFC schedulers are typically designed for dynamic, best-effort operation based on unmanaged resource allocation and elastic virtualization. This paradigm introduces unbounded queueing, resource contention, and timing jitter, making standard schedulers unsuitable for hard-deadline workloads. Moreover, most approaches focus on computational placement, while communication is abstracted or treated as a secondary cost term. As a result, bounded-latency routing and deterministic task execution are rarely co-optimized under a unified timing model. This paper addresses these gaps by utilizing a managed Time-Triggered Edge–Fog–Cloud (TTEFC) architecture that supports safety-critical workloads, orchestrates IEEE Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) for local intra-domain communication, and uses IETF Deterministic Networking (DetNet) for routed inter-domain paths. On this infrastructure, a hierarchical genetic algorithm (HGA) is proposed to jointly schedule partition-to-execution-location allocation, partition execution order, inter-partition route selection, and negotiated per-partition time budgets that act as temporal boundaries for parallel partition-level optimizers. An adaptive slack reallocation operator redistributes unused temporal slack from over-satisfied partitions to budget-violating partitions, improving feasibility convergence. Experiments on synthetic DAG workloads with 100–500 tasks compare the proposed HGA against HEFT and round-robin baselines. These baselines are included as scoped external references to contextualize the end-to-end scheduling performance of the proposed method. Ablation results show that slack reallocation improves partition-budget feasibility, reaches feasible budget assignments earlier, and produces tighter budget–makespan alignment than feedback-free and static-budget variants. An automotive-characteristic DAG case study further evaluates the method on an application-oriented workload under the same timing and communication assumptions.
Omar Hekal, Josepaul Paulachan, Daniel Onwuchekwa et al.· Future Internet· 0 citations
Cloud-edge-end collaborative Artificial Intelligence (AI) computing requires schedulers that allocate heterogeneous resources for Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG)-structured workflows across network tiers. Cross-tier data transfers create ripple effects where a single placement decision propagates delays to downstream tasks, degrading end-to-end completion rates. This paper presents DREAM, a Dynamic Ripple-Effect-Aware Meta-scheduling scheme in which Critical Path Lookahead Scheduling (CPLS) performs bounded-depth trajectory planning with soft reservations for critical tasks, while Opportunity-Cost-Aware Placement (OCAP) evaluates non-critical tasks through a four-component cost covering immediate efficiency, ripple effect, load stability, and opportunity cost. Extensive simulations demonstrate that under the heavy load of 600 tasks, DREAM sustains a task completion rate of ~66%, exceeding classical heuristics by over 10 percentage points. At the extreme load of 1000 tasks, the system utility score improves by 47% over HEFT. Robustness experiments verify competitive performance across multiple DAG topologies and estimation-noise levels.
Chenlu Wang, Yuhuai Peng, Lei Liu et al.· IEEE Transactions on Cogniti...· 0 citations
Frontier open-weight models are increasingly available, but serving them still largely assumes datacenter infrastructure. We present FreeToken, an edge-native MoE serving system that treats a personal machine not as a small GPU, but as a unified, elastic inference platform. FreeToken co-designs the full serving stack, including model layout and loading, expert residency, CPU--GPU execution, agentic state reuse, and runtime memory management, around two realities of local AI: agent workloads continuously change their execution pattern, and edge hardware exposes heterogeneous resources whose balance differs from machine to machine. Rather than committing to a fixed offloading strategy, FreeToken continuously maps computation and model state onto the resources actually available. FreeToken supports more than 20 MoE models and real coding and tool-using agents across hardware ranging from an 8GB laptop GPU to a single workstation GPU. More importantly, it changes what these machines can practically serve, from a 35B model on a laptop to a 284B model on a gaming desktop and the 753B GLM-5.2 on a single workstation GPU. FreeToken turns open weights into deployable local software, making the machines users already own a practical platform for frontier-scale intelligence. We release the system at flashml.ai.
Shuo Yang, Xiao-yun Fan, Melissa Z. Pan et al.· 0 citations