Delay-Optimized Offloading for Mobile Cloud Computing Services in Heterogenous Networks

Offloading is an efficient method for extending the lifetime and speeding up the execution rate of mobile devices by executing remotely in mobile cloud computing (MCC) networks. Meanwhile, heterogeneous network (HetNet), which has multiple types of radio access nodes in the network, is widely accepted as a promising way to satisfy the increased traffic demand. In this paper, we first propose two delay-optimized offloading control schemes in LTE-Advanced heterogeneous networks. One of them is to control the number of offloading users by setting a threshold. Another is to determine whether the users are suited to offload by estimating the execution delay. Both of them take the traffic load of serving cell and neighbouring cells into account. For comparison purpose, the delay performance of different schemes are evaluated by simulations in not only heterogeneous network but also macro-only network.