Task Offloading and Resource Allocation for Deterministic Service Provisioning in the IoT-Edge-Cloud Continuum

Abstract

Future networks will seamlessly integrate computing and communication resources within a unified ecosystem of IoT devices, edge nodes, and cloud servers, forming an IoT-edge-cloud continuum. Within such an ecosystem, tasks can be dynamically offloaded to leverage resources across the continuum and efficiently scale with demand. Task offloading has traditionally focused on minimizing task execution latency or energy consumption. In contrast, we propose a deterministic task offloading and resource allocation scheme for the joint management of communication and computing resources to support services with deterministic service-level requirements. The proposed scheme aims to maximize the number of tasks completed on time, rather than minimizing the latency of individual tasks. To do so, it exploits variable task latency requirements to distribute the workload across the continuum. It can also prioritize high-priority tasks under resource scarcity. Numerical evaluations demonstrate that a deterministic task offloading strategy scales more effectively and can better guarantee timely task completion by balancing resource utilization across the continuum.