Water Pumping and Refilling (WPR): A Resource Allocation Algorithm for Maximizing Acceptance Ratio in Asymmetrical Edge Computing Networks

Computation offloading has received a significant amount of attention in recent years, with many researchers proposing joint offloading decision and resource allocation schemes. However, although existing delay minimization schemes achieve minimum delay costs, they do so at the cost of losing possible further maximization of the number of serviced requests. Furthermore, the asymmetry between uplink and downlink poses challenges to resource allocation in edge computing. This paper addresses this issue by formulating the joint computation offloading and edge resource allocation problem as a mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) problem in an edge-enabled asymmetrical network. Leveraging the margin between a delay-minimum scheme and a near-deadline scheme, a water pumping and refilling (WPR) algorithm is proposed to maximize the number of accepted requests. The WPR algorithm can function both as a supplementary algorithm to a given offloading scheme and as a standalone algorithm to obtain a resource allocation scheme following a customizable refilling policy. The simulation results demonstrated that the proposed algorithm outperforms delay-minimum schemes in achieving a high acceptance ratio.