Joint Resource Allocation for Device-to-Device Communication Assisted Fog Computing

In this paper, joint resource management for device-to-device (D2D) communication assisted multi-tier fog computing is studied. In the considered system model, each subscribed mobile end user can choose to offload its computation task to either an edge server deployed at the base station via the cellular connection or one nearby third-party fog node via the direct D2D connection. After receiving offloading requests from all end users, the network operator determines the optimal management of the fog computing system, including both computation and communication resource allocations, according to its service agreements with end users, energy cost of edge-server processing and total expense in renting third-party fog nodes. With the objective of maximizing the network management profit, a joint multi-dimensional resource optimization problem, integrating link scheduling, channel assignment and power control, is formulated. An optimal solution algorithm is proposed based on the idea of branch-and-price for addressing this complicated mixed integer nonlinear programming problem. To facilitate the practical implementation in large-scale systems, a suboptimal greedy algorithm with significantly reduced computational complexity is also developed. Simulation results examine the efficiency of the proposed D2D-assisted fog computing framework, and demonstrate the superiority of the proposed resource allocation algorithm over the counterparts.