A Vehicular Task Offloading Method with Eliminating Redundant Tasks in 5G HetNets

The combination of mobile edge computing and 5G heterogeneous networks (5G HetNets) provides new vehicular task offloading research solutions. Most existing task offloading studies assume that vehicle tasks are unique and there are no redundant tasks between vehicles. However, there is a duplication of tasks for vehicles within the same base station. That causes a waste of computing resources and increases task offloading costs. To address this problem, this paper proposes the task offloading algorithm TOERT to eliminate redundant tasks in 5G HetNets. The TOERT algorithm is designed to eliminate redundant tasks, improve vehicle task completion rates and reduce offloading costs. Specifically, we consider two cases of redundant tasks within the macro cell base station (MCBS). When the task results have been stored in the MCBS, vehicles directly agree on the transaction price with the MCBS to obtain the task results. The MCBS first eliminates redundant tasks between vehicles when task results are not stored. Then, the MCBS determines the appropriate small cell base station (SCBS) to participate in the partial offloading. Finally, the vehicles negotiate with the MCBS to obtain task results. Against the other five algorithms considered for comparison purposes, the TOERT algorithm effectively eliminates redundant tasks, improves the task completion rate and increases the benefits of both the vehicles and the MCBS.