An enhanced asynchronous advantage actor-critic-based algorithm for performance optimization in mobile edge computing -enabled internet of vehicles networks

Adopting Internet of Vehicles (IoV) technology has led to many new uses to improve traffic control, safety, and entertainment services. Still, the increasing amount of information these applications produce poses significant obstacles regarding response time, power usage, and other related issues. To enhance the functionality of IoV systems, this paper introduces a new way that utilizes Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) and Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) to improve its performance. Specifically, our DRL framework employs a convolutional neural network-based Asynchronous Advantage Actor-Critic (A3C) algorithm, chosen for its efficacy in processing spatial data relevant to IoV systems such as vehicle locations and speeds. The optimization problem considers the vehicle’s location and speed, the MEC server’s resources, and the IoV application’s requirements by formulating it as a Markov Decision Process (MDP). Utilizing the A3C approach, our Deep Neural Network (DNN) method infers an optimal offloading policy. We optimized the proposed algorithm with strategies that include adaptive learning rate, gradient clipping, entropy regularization, and generalized advantage estimation. The optimized algorithm considers factors such as distance, bandwidth, and communication requirements to provide efficient task-offloading solutions, leading to better system utility and performance. The proposed strategy outperforms comparable models through comprehensive simulations, providing an average enhancement of 20.50% in energy consumption, 15.86% in latency, and 11.94% in execution time, emphasizing the effectiveness and superiority of the suggested algorithm in dealing with various workloads while reducing energy consumption, latency, and execution times.