Joint Semantic Transmission and Resource Allocation for Intelligent Computation Task Offloading in MEC Systems

Abstract: Mobile edge computing (MEC) enables the provision of high-reliability and low-latency applications by offering computation and storage resources in close proximity to end-users. Different from traditional computation task offloading in MEC systems, the large data volume and complex task computation of artificial intelligence involved intelligent computation task offloading have increased greatly. To address this challenge, we propose a MEC system for multiple base stations and multiple terminals, which exploits semantic transmission and early exit of inference. Based on this, we investigate a joint semantic transmission and resource allocation problem for maximizing system reward combined with analysis of semantic transmission and intelligent computation process. To solve the formulated problem, we decompose it into communication resource allocation subproblem, semantic transmission subproblem, and computation capacity allocation subproblem. Then, we use 3D matching and convex optimization method to solve subproblems based on the block coordinate descent (BCD) framework. The optimized feasible solutions are derived from an efficient BCD based joint semantic transmission and resource allocation algorithm in MEC systems. Our simulation demonstrates that: 1) The proposed algorithm significantly improves the delay performance for MEC systems compared with benchmarks; 2) The design of transmission mode and early exit of inference greatly increases system reward during offloading; and 3) Our proposed system achieves efficient utilization of resources from the perspective of system reward in the intelligent scenario.