DSAC-T Based Resource Allocation Strategy for Delay Minimization in RIS-Aided MEC Networks

With the explosive growth of user data in 6G networks, existing infrastructures face significant scalability and latency challenges. Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) partially alleviates these issues by deploying computational resources closer to users, but still struggles to fully meet the growing demands. Re-configurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS) enhance communication performance by improving channel quality. However, optimizing resource allocation in RIS-aided MEC systems remains a critical challenge due to the complexity of real-time optimization of multiple parameters. Although Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) methods like Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG) have been applied, they often suffer from Q-value overestimation and instability, resulting in suboptimal performance in dynamic environments. This paper focuses on a single-cell RIS-aided MEC network where multiple user devices offload computational tasks to an edge server. We propose an optimized resource allocation scheme using an improved Distributed Soft Actor-Critic (DSAC-T) algorithm. This approach jointly optimizes power control, computation offloading, edge computing resource allocation, and RIS phase shifts, aiming to minimize total offloading delay to ensure real-time service requirements. Simulation results demonstrate that DSAC-T outperforms multiple baseline methods (e.g., DDPG and SAC) in reducing offloading delay by 46.39% and 16.70%, respectively, while significantly enhancing system stability and convergence speed.