A joint optimization scheme of task caching and offloading for smart factories

In the application scenario of a smart factory, the computing tasks of the smart devices are intensive, and these tasks are sensitive to delay. The smart devices need to offload their tasks to an edge server for execution. However, the computing resources of edge servers are limited, and a workload imbalance will tend to arise among multiple edge servers. To solve these problems, we propose a joint optimization scheme of task caching and offloading based on task scenario awareness, which decouples the joint optimization problem into two subproblems: task caching and task offloading. These two subproblems are solved using a task-scenario-aware bilateral auction algorithm, which enables an edge server to adapt its task caching strategy to the task scenario of the smart devices. Experimental results show that this paper’s scheme reduces the task execution time by up to 21.5% compared to existing schemes and has better load balancing effects.