A reinforcement learning approach for multi-edge task offloading through bi-level optimization

The Internet of Things (IoT) is rapidly expanding globally, but the limited size of IoT devices restricts their battery capacity, computational resources, and wireless bandwidth, making it difficult to handle resource-intensive tasks. Edge Computing addresses these challenges by enabling task offloading to more capable edge servers. However, optimal task offloading in Edge-IoT networks is complex due to dynamic conditions, such as varying server loads and wireless fluctuations. Traditional and some machine learning-based offloading methods often fall short in adaptability or efficiency. This paper introduces a bilevel optimization approach using Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) agents for IoT-level offloading and a priority-aware greedy heuristic for resource allocation on edge servers. The proposed method effectively improves QoS by balancing task execution latency and power consumption, as demonstrated by simulation results.