M4O: A Novel Task Offloading Framework for High-Density High-Load VEC Networks

Abstract

Vehicular edge computing (VEC), a key enabler for the Internet of Things (IoT) in intelligent transportation, addresses onboard processing constraints through collaborative task offloading among vehicles, facilitating latency-sensitive applications such as autonomous driving. However, developing efficient offloading strategies remains particularly challenging in high-density vehicular networks, where intensive computational demands coexist with severely constrained intervehicle communication ranges due to signal blockage. To handle this, we propose M4O, a mobility-aware task offloading framework supporting multihop, multiuser, and multitask offloading optimization. M4O intelligently integrates vehicle mobility patterns and enables relay-assisted offloading to enhance system effectiveness and robustness. The framework employs a dual-algorithm approach: the advantage actor–critic (A2C) for indivisible tasks and the hybrid proximal policy optimization (H-PPO) for divisible tasks, both optimized to minimize the temporally coupled composite cost of time and resources. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based solutions of M4O deliver stable and efficient offloading strategies, outperforming existing benchmarks by significant margins in cost efficiency. Our code is available at https://github.com/Zhouym1028/M4O