A Lightweight Learning-Based Approach for Online Edge-to-Cloud Service Placement

The integration of edge and cloud computing is critical for resource-intensive applications which require low-latency communication, high reliability, and efficient resource utilisation. The service placement problem in these environments poses significant challenges owing to dynamic network conditions, heterogeneous resource availability, and the necessity for real-time decision-making. Because determining an optimal service placement in such networks is an NP-complete problem, the existing solutions rely on fast but suboptimal heuristics or computationally intensive metaheuristics. Neither approach meets the real-time demands of online scenarios, owing to its inefficiency or high computational overhead. In this study, we propose a lightweight learning-based approach for the online placement of services with multi-version components in edge-to-cloud computing. The proposed approach utilises a Shallow Neural Network (SNN) with both weight and power coefficients optimised using a Genetic Algorithm (GA). The use of an SNN ensures low computational overhead during the training phase and almost instant inference when deployed, making it well suited for real-time and online service placement in edge-to-cloud environments where rapid decision-making is crucial. The proposed method (SNN-GA) is specifically evaluated in AR/VR-based remote repair and maintenance scenarios, developed in collaboration with our industrial partner, and demonstrated robust performance and scalability across a wide range of problem sizes. The experimental results show that SNN-GA reduces the service response time by up to 27% compared to metaheuristics and 55% compared to heuristics at larger scales. It also achieves over 95% platform reliability, outperforming heuristics (which remain below 85%) and metaheuristics (which decrease to 90% at larger scales).