Energy-efficient computation offloading in cellular networks

Computationally intensive applications may quickly drain mobile device batteries. One viable solution to address this problem utilizes computation offloading. The tradeoff is that computation offloading introduces additional communication, with a corresponding energy cost. Yet, previous research into computation offloading has failed to account for the special characteristics of cellular networks that impact mobile device energy consumption. In this paper, we aim to develop energy efficient computation offloading algorithms for cellular networks. We analyze the effects of the long tail problem on task offloading, formalize the computation offloading problem, and use Dijkstra's algorithm to find the optimal decision. Since this optimal solution relies on perfect knowledge of future tasks, we further propose an online algorithm for offloading. We have implemented this latter algorithm on Android-based smartphones. Both experimental results from this implementation and trace-driven simulation show that our algorithm can significantly reduce the energy of computation offloading in cellular networks.