Deterministic Task Offloading and Resource Allocation in the IoT-Edge-Cloud Continuum

Future cellular networks will sustainably integrate computing, intelligence and services within a “network of networks” ecosystem that includes IoT devices and subnetworks for local communications and distributed processing. This integration creates an IoT-edge-cloud continuum that enables opportunistic task offloading across the continuum, enhancing network performance, reducing response times and allowing a flexible resource allocation that can facilitate the system to scale according to demand. Future networks should also natively support deterministic service levels for critical and time-sensitive vertical applications. In this paper, we propose a deterministic task offloading and resource allocation scheme for the joint management of communication and computing resources in the IoT-edge-cloud continuum. The proposed scheme prioritizes task completion before deadlines over minimizing the latency in the execution of individual tasks. The scheme leverages flexible latencies across tasks to support a higher number of tasks through a more efficient management of computing and communication resources that better adapts to scenarios with constrained resources.