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Mobility-aware computational offloading in mobile edge networks: a survey

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https://doi.org/10.1007/s10586-021-03268-6 (0123456789().,-volV)(0123456789().
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Mobility-aware computational offloading in mobile edge networks:

a survey
Sardar Khaliq uz Zaman1 • Ali Imran Jehangiri1 • Tahir Maqsood2 • Zulfiqar Ahmad1 • Arif Iqbal Umar1 •

Junaid Shuja2,4 • Eisa Alanazi3 • Waleed Alasmary4

Received: 29 September 2020 / Revised: 5 February 2021 / Accepted: 14 March 2021

 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2021

Abstract
Technological evolution of mobile devices, such as smart phones, laptops, wearable and other handheld devices have come
up with the emergence of different user applications in learning, social networking, entertainment, and community
computing domains. Many of such applications are fully or partially offloaded to the nearby server capable with high
computing and storage resources. The delivery of task offloading results to the users is a challenge in those networks where
the frequency of user mobility is high, leading to increased latency, higher energy consumption and inefficient resource
utilization. In this paper, we survey the existing studies which optimize the task offloading in edge networks with mobility
management. We formulate taxonomy of the research domain for classification of research works. We compare the listed
state-of-the-art research works based on the components identified from taxonomy. Moreover, we debate future research
directions for mobility, security, and scalability aware MEC offloading.

Keywords Mobile Edge Computing (MEC)
Mobility aware
Computational offloading

1 Introduction to potential battery drainage in smart/mobile devices [1].

With the advent of modern computing cores and memory
architectures, today‘s mobile devices have become smart
but still limited to computing and residual battery capacity.
There are many computationally intensive applications
such as 3D modeling, augmented/virtual reality (AR/VR),
online games, ultra-HD image and video processing, arti-
ficial intelligence and Internet of things (IoT) based
applications which are resource hungry and generate
tremendous amount of data [1] [2]. Such applications may
induce heavy amount of computational workload, leading
& Junaid Shuja
skhaleeq@cuiatd.edu.pk
1
Department of Information Technology, Hazara University
Mansehra, Mansehra, Pakistan
2
Department of Computer Science, COMSATS University
Islamabad (CUI), Abbottabad Campus, Islamabad, Pakistan
3
Department of Computer Science, Umm Al-Qura University,
Makkah, Saudi Arabia
4
Department of Computer Engineering, Umm Al-Qura
University, Makkah, Saudi Arabia
Other than limited battery power, memory, processing, and
storage constraints also hinder the successful execution at
mobile devices. The computationally intensive tasks can be
offloaded to the proximate cloud and edge servers equipped
with sufficient computing resources [3].
The concept of computation offloading or cyber-forag-
ing was first introduced in Mobile Cloud Computing
(MCC) [4, 5]. In computational offloading, mobile devices
offload their computationally intensive tasks to the central
cloud data centers. The mobile devices face a major chal-
lenge while contending for computational offloading. The
time and resources saved by mobile devices is sometimes
offset by latency involved in discovering appropriate cloud
server and migrate the workload. Several real-time mobile
applications, such as online gaming, audio/video confer-
encing, and financial transactions require high quality of
service (QoS) and low latency. Failing to provide desired
QoS adversely affects the user experience [3].
To reduce network delays and improve user experience
compared to MCC, researchers proposed the idea of
cloudlets. A cloudlet can be referred as small scale data
center that is placed near to the users [6, 7]. A few fixed

123

servers are connected through the wireless network in a
micro cellular region to perform the computation and
offloading [8]. To overcome the shortcomings of both the
MCC and cloudlet, the European Telecommunications
Standards Institute (ETSI) presented the idea of Mobile
Edge Computing (MEC). MEC brings the computation and
storage resources close to the edge of mobile network to
execute the highly resource demanding applications [9].
The MEC paradigm enhances the computing services and
reduce the latency in application access [10]. Large Inter-
net service providers, like Microsoft, Google, Facebook,
and Netflix are deploying their MEC services to relieve the
mobile users and delegate their workflows to the native
edge servers. Hence, the most of the tasks are performed at
edge servers resulting in reduced latency and power con-
sumption than the traditional cloud systems [11, 12]. MEC
offers proximate service provisioning to end users, to
reduce the access latencies compared to distant cloud ser-
vices [13]. Figure 1 illustrates the generic MEC
architecture.
Handling user mobility is a critical challenge in MEC
[14]. The users are equipped with wireless multi-access
technologies, such as 5G and Wi-Fi. Multi-access wireless
technologies provide users with freedom to move between
access points and base stations leading to variable internet
connectivity. As a result, mobility management in MEC
becomes a challenge due to intermittent connectivity. Such
scenarios can result in frequent disconnections, and ele-
vated noise levels. However, not all MEC solutions tackle
this challenge and assume the user to be static [15, 16].
Data Center
Tier-3
Upload
d
Download
Tier-2 Cellular BS
sBSs
Tier-1
Wifi Routers
End
nd Users
ANETs
ANE
N TTss
Fig. 1 A 3-tier heterogeneous MEC system
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Various surveys have been produced which cover the dif-
ferent aspects of Mobile edge computing. Those aspects
include but not limited to, architectures and frameworks
[9], task/code offloading [4], technology integration [17],
machine learning models to optimize the offloading and
caching decisions[16], and device to device communica-
tion [18]. However, we could not find an adequate number
of studies that purely address the mobility aware offloading
in mobile edge networks. In this article, we focus on
mobility aware MEC solutions.
The contributions of this paper are:
• We survey of the recent research efforts in Mobile Edge
Computing with respect to mobility management.
• We formulate the taxonomy based on key features,
parameters, models, and constraints.
• We compare the state-of-the-art MEC offloading solu-
tions based on taxonomized parameters and features.
• We highlight and identify some open research chal-
lenges and future directions relating to mobility aware
MEC offloading.
The paper is structured as; Section II explains the sig-
nificance of computation offloading in MEC and provides a
glimpse of user mobility in offloading decisions supported
by a use case. The use case elucidates the impact of
mobility affecting the delivery of offloading results to the
mobile user. The detailed taxonomy of task offloading
techniques for Mobile Edge Computing is formulated in
Section III. Section IV presents analysis of state-of-the-art
on MEC computation offloading with focus on mobility-
awareness. In section V, we compare the state-of-the-art
based on the parameters of the taxonomy. Section VI
presents the research issues and challenges pertaining to
mobility aware MEC. Section VII provides the concluding
remarks for the article.
2 Background: MEC and mobility
management
Modern wearable and low power IoT devices cannot per-
form the full execution of compute intensive applications.
The mobile users frequently download and install the
applications from desired software repositories, such as
Google play, Samsung store and Apple store [18]. Those
applications include but not limited to games, text editors,
photo/video editors, and face and speech recognition. In
computation offloading, such applications are partitioned
into small tasks, some of which are executed at the nearby
MEC servers thus preserving the energy and speeding up
the computation process.
On the other hand, the mobile user certainly consumes
some amount of energy, for the transmission of offloaded
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tasks to the MEC server, and subsequently for the receiving
of computation results from the server. Therefore, a major
challenge in computation offloading is to take the decision,
whether to offload the task or not. In case of offloading
decision, another question arises about the application
selection and amount of workflow needed to offload [9]. A
decision made on computation offloading could possibly
result in:
• Local execution: refers to the computation of user
application or a set of tasks at the mobile device locally
(see Fig. 1). The data is not offloaded to the MEC
server. This will occur when a mobile user fails to find
the appropriate MEC server due unavailability or
required resources, overloading, or link failure.
• Full offloading: The entire user application is computed
and processed by the MEC server.
• Partial offloading: Certain portion of a user submitted
application workflow comprising a single task or
multiple tasks is executed locally whereas rest of the
application tasks is offloaded to MEC servers.
The importance of task delegation/offloading or
rescheduling has great importance, to reduce the energy
consumption and latency, with optimum resource utiliza-
tion [19–21]. In 5G cellular networks, traditional high
compute-intensive applications (such as online HD games,
augmentation reality, IoT applications, and 3D modeling,
etc.) cannot be performed in the device itself [3, 22].
The task offloading is an emerging research area in
mobile edge computing (Fig. 2). The task offloading
request generally interrupts the user connection with the
server. More elaborately, a mobile user submits the task
delegation request to the edge server and then moves away
disconnecting him from the network. Further, the suc-
cessful delivery of the execution results to the user
becomes a challenge and leads to increased latency and
energy consumption [22]. Further, it becomes more crucial
when the frequency of user mobility is high i-e., the user
rapidly changes its location and switches between different
small cell base stations (SBSs). The motivation behind this
survey is to explore such schemes that consider the user
mobility as a key factor during the offloading decisions.
We extend this discussion with the help of an illustrative
scenario (see Figs. 3, 4).
We envision a scenario in which the mobile users in
different areas are connected to their corresponding 5G
base stations (roadside/roof top units). The base stations are
equipped with networking, computation, and storage
capabilities. Such a unified view creates various task
offloading scenarios. The mobile user submits some com-
putationally intensive task to the nearby server. However,
due to rapid mobility the user makes a handoff to the other
base station right after the submission of workflow to the
previously associated server. Once the mobile user moves
out of the previous edge server, the offloaded task will be
failed, thus extend the response time of mobile applica-
tions. Such offloading failures result in energy and com-
putational resources wastage [11]. Consequently, before
the task offloading the MEC network should analyze the
user‘s moving patterns and predict its next location. The
task then may be offloaded to a suitable server at predicted
location.
3 Task offloading in MEC: TAXONOMY
Various studies have been performed on the optimization
problems relating to task offloading in mobile edge com-
puting. Those studies have been classified below, based on
specific optimization objectives, constraints, algorithms,
mobility models, and support networks.
4 Objectives
The mobile edge computing has various benefits which can
be categorized based on different performance objectives.
Some of the key objectives are described below.
4.1 Energy efficiency
The mobile devices are limited in energy and storage due
to their small design. Nevertheless, the users expect more
from them, in terms of application usage, like remote
surveillance, community gaming, and e-health [23]. Those
applications are essentially energy hungry and providing
power to the mobile devices round the clock is a critical
job. However, with efficient computation at the user end
the energy can be saved to adequate levels. For energy
saving the power-hungry tasks may be offloaded from
mobile devices to the edge server. The experiments show
that substantial power saving can be achieved by compu-
tation offloading. For instance, eyeDentify is a multimedia
application that can complete up to 44 times more com-
putation load by exploiting the task offloading [24]. It also
enhances the battery life of edge devices to execute dif-
ferent AR applications by 30–50% [25].
Several computation offloading algorithms target to
reduce the energy consumption offset with the latency
involved during offloaded application [1, 9]. Usually,
computational offloading techniques first calculate the
expected delay and energy consumption for the target
application and then offload applications tasks to MEC.
Same approach is used by a three-stage task offloading
algorithm for efficient energy consumption is proposed in
123

Fig. 2 Viable results of
computation offloading decision
Fig. 3 Task offloading scenarios
with user mobility and handoff
[26]. We discuss some more techniques on energy aware
task offloading ahead with joint optimization objectives.
4.2 Latency
Delay is one of the most used performance metrics that
significantly affects the user experience in MEC. The user
applications in ultra-dense 5G networks have lower latency
requirements, i.e., a round trip time of 1 ms, that is 10
times less than the 10 ms as of 4G [27]. The real-time
applications are highly delay bounded while offloading the
tasks to cloud servers. Therefore, increasing the density of
sBSs with computing abilities is a reasonable approach.
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Cluster Computing
Mach and Becvar [28] propose a distributed cloud-aware
power control algorithm (CaPC) for delay sensitive appli-
cations. CaPC iteratively finds the suitable time when
power control is triggered. Fog Computing also offers low
latency but at the cost of capacity limitations, however the
joint operations of cloud and fog computing systems can
decrease the service delay and guarantee to remove the
capacity limitations [27].
4.3 Caching
Task caching is an emerging idea in which the offloading
task is cached at the edge server to avoid the repeated
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Fig. 4 Taxonomy of MEC Mobile Edge

offloading [16] Computing

Support
Objectives Constraints Mobility Models Algorithms Networks

Mobility Software Machine Edge

Energy Efficiency aware Defined Network Learning Network

Context Nature
Latency Stochastic FOG
aware Inspired

Caching Safety aware Random Walk Cloudlet

Scalability User Movement

Joint Optimization
aware Tracking

offloading of the same task and enhance the user experi-
ence [29]. This helps to minimize the delay and save the
energy and computation time [30]. Several studies have
been done on caching to save the resources. However, the
major concern is the storage capacity of the Edge servers.
Several caching policies and algorithms have been pro-
posed by the researchers in mobile edge computing. The
Least Frequently Used (LFU), and the Least Recently Used
(LRU) [31] are the conventional caching schemes widely
used in MEC. These schemes are simple but cannot per-
form well in heterogeneous task and server sizes. Further,
they also ignore the task size and latency involved in
fetching the tasks.
4.4 Joint optimization
Several studies have been proposed to consider the task
offloading as joint optimization problem in mobile edge
computing. We discuss them in the two subsections,
(a) Energy and Delay, (b) Caching and Offloading.
4.4.1 Energy efficiency and reduced latency
A multi-stage sequential game model is proposed to meet
the energy and delay requirements at the same time [32]. A
heuristic offloading decision algorithm (HODA), jointly
optimizes the delay and resource utilization [33]. An
adaptive sequential task offloading (ASTO) technique
proposed in [34] facilitates the mobile devices to take
offloading decisions sequentially on the basis of channel
interference and offered computing resources. This could
achieve good results in reducing delay and energy con-
sumption. An energy-efficient computation offloading
(EECO) mechanisms is presented in [35] which incorporate
the multi-access characteristics of the next generation 5G
networks. A joint optimization of task offloading and sBSs
allocation reduces the power consumption offset by the
delay constraints. A genetic algorithm based multi-objec-
tive workflow-based computation offloading framework
concurrently considers energy consumption and task
deadline constraints while the task offloading to edge ser-
vers in [36], but the user mobility and the topology changes
were not considered.
4.4.2 Caching and offloading
To perform the computational offloading the storage and
computing both capabilities of an MEC server are con-
sidered. However, for caching only, considering the storage
capacity is enough. Hence, the joint optimization of both
caching and offloading objectives can also be exploited to
enhance the MEC system efficiency [29]. In [37] the
authors proposed a light weight scheme that reduces the
latency and energy consumption by optimizing the com-
putation, caching, and offloading policies.
4.5 Constraints
4.5.1 Mobility aware
User mobility is tightly coupled with the, network con-
nection between edge node and the mobile device. A
mobile user will get disconnected after the delegation of
certain task or workflow to the nearby edge server. While,
the successful delivery of the execution results to the user
becomes a challenge and endeavors to increased latency
and energy consumption, since the user has changed its
next location [22]. In addition, that becomes more critical
when the frequency of user mobility is higher. Here a key
challenge is to mitigate effects of mobility and reviving the
offloading priority function. Further, to assure the quality
of service for the user, with time critical services and

123

higher mobility, MEC systems can reserve some dedicated
resources and offer reliable computing service for such
users. Section 4 depicts the detailed analysis on such
mobility-aware techniques.
4.6 Context aware
The distinguishing feature of the MEC system is its ability
to leverage the proximity of edge servers to the consumer
end. This feature can be exploited to track the users‘ real-
time information like; behaviors, moving paths, locations,
and operating environments. Therefore, context-aware
services can be easily provided to the users [38]. One of the
commonly used context-aware services is the recommen-
dation system, which is broadly used in online recom-
mendation of food, location and venues [39, 40]. In
addition, AR applications can also be exploited in video
launches of new cars in an auto show. The viewers can be
suggested the location of cars based on their interest.
4.7 Safety aware
Some of the interesting research directions in MEC include
safety measures such as security, reliability, and privacy.
MEC systems are usually more resource constrained than
centralized cloud systems and are more prone to the
security attacks. We discuss the aforesaid issues as follows.
4.7.1 Security
Security is a critical challenge in edge paradigm ecosystem
due to several factors discussed ahead. The edge networks
involve different enabling technologies like; wireless net-
works, distributed systems and virtualization platforms
[41]. Several security protocols are proposed for fully
connected mesh networks, however their applicability in
mobile edge networks is questionable due to the intermit-
tent connectivities in MEC. Though, some studies cover
the secure communication aspects in Mobile cloud net-
works [42]. However, such solutions do not well suit for
mobile edge networks, because the working surroundings
of edge devices may face several new threats different from
MCC [27].
More elaborately, the task offloading in MEC is quite
susceptible to be snooped or intruded because the wireless
medium is naturally shared and open. To handle this issue a
physical layer security instead of traditional encryption is
well suited. The authors in [43] proposed a secrecy channel
encoding scheme to avoid the eavesdropping attacks. They
assumed the intruder‘s Channel State Information (CSI) to
be known. The authors in [44] developed a nonorthogonal
multiple access (NOMA) based mechanism that detects the
malicious nodes in MEC network. The secrecy outage
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Cluster Computing
probability (SOP) function has been used to assess the
security level of uplink channel during task offloading.
Similar algorithm has been proposed in [45] that does not
consider the CSI of malicious nodes and work under
realistic scenarios. The intrusion detection rate of this
technique is higher than NOMA. However, being an
exhaustive search-based technique, its complexity is higher
and cannot be considered as an affordable solution in MEC
paradigms where the latency is off paramount importance.
4.7.2 Reliability
In terms of service provisioning the reliability and avail-
ability of resources is also an important perspective to be
guaranteed, which ultimately will enhance the user quality
of experience and service level agreements. Therefore,
working on some proactive defense measures to ensure the
network and data integrity would be an exciting research
area. A security mechanism termed as HoneyBot is pro-
posed in [46] to cope with the Denial of Service (DoS)
attacks. However, its accuracy and speed, is not up to the
mark. In layered architectures like MEC, the fault tolerance
plays vital role in successful execution of user submitted
tasks. Hence, the protection and restoration mechanisms
across different layers of MEC would improve the avail-
ability of computing and caching resources.
4.7.3 Privacy
Majority of the reported works related to privacy issues are
based on centralized mobile networks such as conventional
clouds and mobile clouds. A very few works are available
that address the privacy aspects in MEC [47], specifically
the task offloading. The mobile devices frequently offload
their tasks to the nearby server with much focus on latency
minimization and energy savings. Nevertheless, the serving
node may not be a trusted one and might track the user
locations and other contextual information that compro-
mises the user privacy. The aforesaid issue can be resolved
if the task is offloaded to a distant server, enabling the
intermediate servers to ensure the user privacy, but that
will increase the latency of the system.
To achieve a balance among minimizing the latency and
maintaining the privacy, a pioneer technique is proposed in
[47] termed as Post-Decision State (PDS) learning frame-
work. The PDS model uses the averaging operations to
determine an objective function inspired by Markovian
chain. The averaging techniques work well in noise less
channels [48], which is an unrealistic condition in wireless
mobile networks. Further, PDS is a deep learning-based
framework that induces higher time complexity and tends
to increase the latency.
Cluster Computing
Moreover, the data privacy concerns become more
critical in D2D communication. At this level, there is no
third-party trusted entity that guarantee the user privacy
and integrity [41]. The users need to develop a trust rela-
tionship for secure and private communication. Here, the
opportunity to develop microlevel third party solutions for
trust building would be an interesting research area.
4.8 Scalability aware
Edge computing reshapes the entire technological land-
scape of IoT devices. It addresses the shortcomings of the
resource-limited devices in terms of execution time and
energy consumption. Though, edge computing is a rapidly
adaptive technology, but accommodating exponentially
growing users to offer round the clock services in such
distributed network is a challenging task [9]. When mul-
tiple users request to offload their tasks on the same link, it
creates congestion in the edge network.
A virtual machine (VM) migration technique is pre-
sented for computation offloading, which highlights the
effective utilization of edge resources and manages the
load over the edger server [49]. The VM migrations sim-
plifies the synchronization and task scheduling in the
computation offloading process but involves the complex-
ity of context gathering and remote execution control [50].
A multi-user and multi-tasking computation offloading
model is presented in [51]. The model uses edge computing
architecture under strict latency, energy, and security
constraints. The model enhances the resource utilization of
edge servers and reduced the latency.
A distributed computation offloading strategy is pro-
posed using densely populated edge computing architec-
ture [52]. In this scheme, IoT devices and edge servers are
deployed on large scale, and a multi-objective optimization
function is developed to achieve effective resource allo-
cation with low latency. However, computation load is not
balanced across the edge servers. Similar approach is fol-
lowed in [53] to reduce execution time, and the energy
consumption of heterogeneous IoT devices.
A task aggregation and prioritization, technique is pro-
posed in [54] to handle the scalability problem. In [55], a
distributed task execution model for personalized health
care is introduced to reduce energy and latency. However,
the applicability of this model in public edge networks is
not explored yet.
4.9 Mobility models
4.9.1 Software defined networking (SDN) models
In MEC the workflows are offloaded on the basis of system
resource utilization and geographic locations of the servers
[56]. More elaborately, the authors in [57] devised a
mechanism in which the mobility is managed by reallo-
cating the already offloaded tasks in the mobile edge net-
work. The task migration leads to reduced delay and
distance between mobile user and the sBSs. A Software-
Defined Network (SDN) based framework is proposed in
[56]. The authors considered the physical locations of the
mobile user within the cell radius and the edge server, but
the trajectory of the mobile user is not taken into
consideration.
4.9.2 Stochastic models
A Markov model is built on the basis of recorded user
mobility patterns on different networks [58, 59]. This
trained mobility model is helpful to predict the future
network conditions, which is further useful in dynamic task
assignment decisions. Another approach for mobility
awareness could be the allocation of computing resources
in edge networks on the basis of number of active users
[60].
4.9.3 Random walk models
One of the simplest mobility models is Random Way Point
(RWP) model. In this model a mobile node can move
freely in any direction (zig-zag) from the base station [61].
Further, RWP model is mathematically analyzable and
easy to implement. However, this model frequently suffers
to a non-uniform stationary mobile node distribution
leading to complicate the handover analysis or predictive
decisions [62]. A RWP based robust framework is pro-
posed in [63], which considers the user location during task
execution or offloading. Another RWP based strategy for
the performance evaluation of offloading systems is
exploited as the mobility model of mobile hosts in [64].
The authors examine the unreachability, mean time to
recover (MTTR), and total execution time of workflow
(makespan). This model is incapable to minimize the tasks
execution time and energy consumption. Another RWP
based interesting approach is to handle computational
offloading based on user mobility patterns, i.e., to assume
the movement as random function. With this method, the
data rate of a channel can be estimated by signal strength,
which is further used to estimate the amount of time
required to offload a particular task [65]. Self-similar Least
Action Walk (SLAW) is a mobility model which predicts
the users’ next expected location on the basis of walk
behavior [18]. SLAW is particularly effective in predicting
the mobility patterns of device-to-device users having the
common task offloading specifications within a same
geographical location. The afore said models are widely
used in delay tolerant networks, however their deployment
123

and efficacy in delay-sensitive networks such as next
generation 5G networks or edge cloudlets is not known
[66].
4.9.4 User movement tracking (UMT) based
Further exploration of aforesaid studies highlighted some
limitations, such as they considered the user allocation
problem as a static global optimization problem and
focused to determine the optimal or near optimal solutions.
Those approaches can be unproductive while dealing with
the systems operated with real-time connectivity, because
of high time-complexity. In addition, the existing studies,
e.g., [67–69] reflected the distance between edge users and
MEC servers as the primary objective and inclined to
ignore the users‘ motion information. Therefore, when the
users are highly mobile, the schedules produced for task re-
allocation can have bad user-perceived performance.
Consequently, such mobility related information, e.g., user
motion information and speed, also need to be utilized for
the decision making of allocation at real-time.
In further works related to mobility, besides geographic
location of the fixed edge servers, the availability of mobile
resources is determined on the basis of a Head-light Model
(HLM) [70]. The model captures a zone alongside the
direction of movement, analogous to the headlight of a
moving vehicle. Moreover, the HLM also considers the
mean encounter time between a mobile and a cloudlet
network, which is statistically calculated from the user’s
historic movement logs. Another statistical mobility model
advocates that the inter-contact time between any two users
is complied with an exponential distribution [71].
Algorithms For optimal task assignment and offloading to
the edge servers, the placement algorithms play a key role.
Various sort of algorithms such as learning based, evolu-
tionary/nature-inspired and heuristics based have been in
practice.
4.9.5 Machine learning
Machine learning is an artificial intelligence-based art that
analyses systems and obtain the knowledge form data.
Several learning methods have been proposed recently for
task offloading in MEC. An energy efficient online learn-
ing-based task offloading technique is proposed in [72]. For
better resource utilization while offloading the tasks, an
intelligent machine learning-based technique with metric
prediction feature is proposed in [73]. Deep neural net-
works are also famous in optimization problems, and sev-
eral lightweight frameworks have been introduced for
modern consumer-based networks such as MEC. In [74], a
deep reinforcement learning method for interconnected
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vehicles is designed to develop an integrated resource
management system. Similar method is also used for
energy efficiency in mobile devices while delegating the
tasks to the nearby edge servers [75].
We observed that most of the machine learning models
proposed to predict user mobility use Deep Neural Net-
works (DNN) or Reinforcement Learning (RL). Using3
DNN or RL models involve higher time complexity due to
two reasons [76, 77]. First, state space and complexity
increase with the increase in number of heterogenous cells
and number of users present in the cells. Second, the DNNs
and RL models are essentially designed for linear mapping
and systems with several input parameters and multiple
features. On the other hand, the input data required for a
learning model, i.e., user mobility traces are non-linear in
nature. Further, in cellular networks, the number of input
parameters and features are limited and handcrafted.
4.9.6 Nature-inspired/evolutionary
The task assignment is critical problem for real-time delay
sensitive applications. Hence, the workflow of the IoT
devices must be evenly distributed among the edge nodes,
and the performance parameters like delay, bandwidth,
execution time of the edge nodes, and existing system load
should also be considered aside. Maintaining the tradeoffs
between the aforesaid performance parameters is an NP-
hard problem [78]. In such conditions, it would be quite
challenging to use the traditional task assignment approa-
ches. However, the evolutionary and nature inspired algo-
rithms such as Genetic algorithm (GA), particle swarm
optimization (PSO), and Ant Colony Optimization (ACO)
can work very well in such multi-objective scenarios [79].
Additionally, the ACO algorithm is used for load bal-
ancing in edge clouds with reduced response time of the
tasks [80]. The ACO algorithm is used for task scheduling
in cloudlets [81], and for deadline-aware task scheduling in
fog networks [82]. In [78] a metaheuristic algorithm using
ACO is proposed for task offloading. The algorithm bal-
ances the workload across the fog nodes and optimizes the
resource utilization with defined QoS constraints.
4.10 Support networks
The mobile edge networks have come up new computing
and storage paradigms. Different types of support networks
have been proposed by the industry and academia. In this
section, we present some state-of-the-art architectures
including MEC, Fog Computing, Cloudlet and Edge
Caching.
Cluster Computing
4.10.1 Edge
Edge network is an ETSI launched standard to enable the
hosting of different consumer-oriented applications on
mobile devices. The ETSI has defined the specifications,
requirements, scenarios, architectures, and APIs for the
Edge network. Edge servers are placed at the proximity of
base stations. They can handle the user requests or forward
them to the backhaul data centers if needed [27].
4.10.2 FOG
Like cloud computing FOG computing is a layered archi-
tecture designed for IoT applications. A FOG network
consists of several IoT devices in proximity which can
interact and collaborate with each other on a massive scale.
FOG system forms a cluster of IoT devices to exploit their
storage and computation power and provides a better
control regarding the communication and networking.
4.10.3 Cloudlet
Cloudlet is a 3-tier extended cloud architecture, in which
the mobile user or IoT devices are connected with a small
nearby cloud datacenter located at the immediate Wi-Fi
access point or small cell base stations [27]. The cloudlets
are self-managed, energy efficient and easy to deploy.
Cloudlets are quite exciting to use for real time and delay
sensitive applications and can collaborate with the 5G
cellular networks.
5 Mobility-aware offloading in mobile
environments: state of the art
As mentioned earlier, this survey mainly focusses the
mobility-aware task offloading at the mobile edge net-
works. Therefore, we discuss stat-of-the-art mobility-aware
schemes used for task offloading across different mobile
environments, such as MEC, FOG, Cloudlets, and vehic-
ular edge networks (VEN). In addition, we highlight the
characteristics or features of the mobility-aware schemes
used in different edge-centric paradigms.
5.1 MEC
Mostly existing schemes on task offloading consider the
user location to be fixed instead of dynamic mobility. This
can be quite impractical in the real scenarios. For optimal
performance, with minimal latency the mobility of the end
devices must be considered during offloading decisions. In
this section we elaborate the state-of-the-art techniques to
handle the user mobility in Mobile Edge Computing.
A dynamic mobility-aware offloading algorithm for
edge computing (DMPO) is proposed in [67]. In DMPO
offloading path is minimized after movement of user
equipment. The size of the user data is also predicted, and
mobility path of the users is predicted for a short term. The
algorithm works good if base stations are evenly deployed
and reduces the energy consumption and latency. But it
does not provide optimum solution when base stations are
unevenly deployed. Also considers the mobility in one
dimension.
Energy-aware mobility management (EMM) framework
for larger mobile edge networks is proposed in [68]. In
EMM the information about the incoming tasks can be
classified into two classes. The first is user-side information
(user location, available base stations and size of the input
data or tasks) and second is the BS-side information
(channel frequency, gain and co-channel interference).
There are two deployment scenarios; in the first scenario
the user knows both states, mentioned above, i.e., it has
global state information (GSI). In the second scenario the
user only has the user state information; therefore, it would
have to determine the base station side information. The
authors further assume that a serving base station is not
changed for one task, which means that the user knows
about GSI and it may avoid the unnecessary handoffs. The
user will remain associated with the same base station until
its task completion at least. Those deployment scenarios
increase the energy consumption. To tackle this, the
authors use the Lyapunov optimization formula to balance
the energy consumption and latency involved.
To improve the user reallocation process, a three stage
mobility aware model is proposed in MobMig [11]. In first
step the overloaded MEC servers are identified which have
no remaining capacity even though there are more users in
the queue waiting for the resources. For all overloaded
servers, the users which can be reassigned to the other
underloaded servers within the same coverage area are
identified. In the last step the users needed to migrate are
shifted to the idle or underloaded servers, and new users are
accepted in the system. In [83] Mobility-aware Workflow
Offloading and Scheduling Strategy (MAWOSS) is pro-
posed. The algorithm first identifies the task in a ready
queue needed to be executed. Then the distance between
the end device and different edge servers is calculated and
the server with fastest transfer speed is selected. The
algorithm minimizes the energy consumption and response
time but does not handle the mobility fair enough because
it is designed for single user environment and not well
suited for the multiuser edge networks.
To handle the user mobility a time slot-based Lyapunov-
optimization inspired Mobility-Aware Dynamic Service
Placement (MDSP) algorithm is proposed that enables the
mobile users to send service requests to their local MEC
123

server [84]. An SDN controller collects the requests-in-
formation and chooses the best MEC node to server a
corresponding user. The SDN controller checks the dif-
ferent parameters in the decision process such as, compu-
tation capacity and computing delay. However, the
limitation of the system is that it considers the service
delay but does not consider the queuing delay of a task.
Queuing delay is a key consideration in time-varying
user environment where the task offloading is not a one-
time operation [85]. Some mobility aware techniques per-
form the base station allocation to the end users based on
channel conditions. In [86] a Heuristic Mobility Aware
Offloading Algorithm (HMAOA) is presented to optimize
the task offloading in MEC environments for high speed
moving users. The next expected base station of the user is
predicted by considering not only the computational
resources but also the channel fading, noise, interference,
and distance from the end user to the base station. The
algorithm promises to reduce the latency and energy con-
sumption, but its mobility prediction feature produces the
short-term results. Due to this limitation the tasks that need
to be offloaded or cached again cannot be guaranteed to
have the optimal services.
Further works on mobility awareness include Mobility-
Aware Deep Reinforcement Learning (M-DRL) [87]
technique for optimal service provisioning in MEC. To be
more specific the authors developed a glimpse mobility
model to predict a series of next expected locations. The
model uses an independent training algorithm which con-
siders the user current location as 2-dimensional vector
having horizontal and vertical distance of mobile user from
the base station and mathematically determines the base
station with least reported delay. Similar methodology is
adopted in [88] called as Mobility-aware Edge Service
Placement method (MAESP). This is a multi-objective
method assisted with machine learning technique
(CMABDO) which considers user mobility information
(time, location) as context of the user to predict the next
possible location. The authors in [89] worked out to
develop a mobility prediction technique based on social
generative adversarial networks (SGAN).
Traditional mobility prediction techniques only consider
a specific user‘s next expected location just based on its
historical mobility patterns. However, the above-mentioned
model not only focuses the user movement records but also
considers the moving activities of other users in the
vicinity, to enhance the prediction accuracy. The authors
aim to reduce the response time and offloading failures
count of the system. Migration energy and offloading
energy are also the important factors to be considered while
offloading a group of tasks. An energy-cum-mobility aware
offloading framework (MAEO) that forecasts the power
required, during user migration and for task offloading is
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Cluster Computing
proposed in [90]. This framework uses Dijkstra‘s algorithm
with machine learning to predicts the user next location and
the amount of energy required for task offloading and user
migration.
5.2 FOG
FOG computing is an extended form of traditional cloud
computing. FOG provides the network and computing
resources in a distrusted way close to the end users.
However, the FOG has limited-service coverage; hence the
mobile users might get out of radio coverage resulting in
more handovers. Higher handovers have adverse effects
like increased service cost, higher energy consumption and
increased latency. Therefore, considering the user mobility
while migrating the task to the FOG Computing Node
(FCN) has significant importance.
We discuss some of the works related to mobility in
FOG networks. A mixed Integer Nonlinear programming
problem (MINLP) inspired scheme using Gini Coefficient
based FCNs selection algorithm (GCFSA) is presented in
[91]. The algorithm assumes that the end user has sub-
mitted a workflow to the FCN and tends to move away
without collecting the execution results. Their mobility
model focuses on the current state of the active mobile
users to predict the sojourn time which ultimately reduces
the probability of migrations. The model also reduces the
offloading failures. Another scheme that focuses to mini-
mize the offloading failures called mobility-aware and
genetic algorithm- (MAGA)is proposed in [92]. MAGA
supports multisite offloading scenario, offering finest
offloading decisions to enhance the offloading success
frequency and minimize the power usage of the mobile
devices while satisfying the task completion time require-
ments in FOG environments. However, computational cost
of algorithm is high and is well-suited for single-job
scenarios.
An offloading framework proposed in [93] gathers
Global Positioning System (GPS) traces of mobile user and
predict the user‘s next position. This information is useful
for Wireless Access Point (WAP) selection during
offloading. The aforesaid WAP selection technique also
considers the WAP location, network bandwidth and
latency constraints. The authors in [94] proposed a mobility
aware collaborative framework for FOG networks (Mobi-
IoST). In this framework, if the user changes its location
and gets disconnected from the base station, the base sta-
tion intimates the central cloud about this and transfers the
user code and data to the cloud. The cloud node then
analyses the user mobility patterns and predicts the user‘s
new location with the help of Markovian model. The main
modules of the aforesaid framework are i) modeling of user
patterns, ii) user‘s next location prediction, and iii) results
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delivery. The user location prediction is based on, day of
the week, time of the day, structure of user surroundings
(roads/buildings). When user is re-connected to the new
base station, the results are subsequently delivered to the
mobile device. The model improves the energy consump-
tion and reduces the delay.
Apart from probabilistic approaches the deterministic
approaches are also in practice, but their accuracy is
questionable. However, these deterministic methods can
achieve good results by exploiting the real time user
mobility information. In this regard, Dynamically trading-
off fog and edge resources for performance and mobility-
aware IoT services (URMILA) is a novel method proposed
in [95]. URMILA determines the mobile user next location
holistically by observing the motion path in real time. This
feature is achieved by creating a session between the user
and FCN using RESTful API. User movement path, start
and end locations are determined by using Open Street
Maps and Google Maps APIs. The optimization parameters
considered are energy consumption and response time, but
the framework is only suitable for single unified applica-
tions/tasks and does not consider the microservice based
applications which are multithreaded in nature. The authors
in [96] used Bayesian network based prediction service
called MoBaaS [97] to proposed the Enhanced Follow-me-
Cloud (EFMEC). The user mobility is first predicted with
MoBaaS then applies a multiple attribute decision algo-
rithm for service placement. Nevertheless, this technique
only works when the historical record of user mobility
patterns is available.
5.3 Cloudlets
In next generation 5G network the number of mobile users
and IoT devices is a multi-billion figure with diverse net-
work resources. With the increasing demands of users, the
concept of service provisioning is orchestrated from cen-
tralized cloud-datacenters to distributed clouds associated
with the corresponding edge servers or mini data centers,
which enhances the fault tolerance capability, reduces the
latency of the user applications.
Like the edge servers, the concept of task offloading is
applied in cloudlets. Different studies have been proposed
to optimally offload the group of tasks to cloudlets. Some
of them focus on user mobility as well. The researchers in
[98] proposed a Virtualized Network Framework (VNF)
which enables the mobile users to freely move among
cloudlets with strict joint delay and mobility requirements.
The system checks the mobility profile of the user based on
its previous locations traces. Using different mining and
machine learning techniques the next location of the user is
approximated for task offloading. The algorithm jointly
optimizes the delay and service orchestration required for
upcoming set of tasks but does not consider the other
performance parameters such as, energy consumption, load
balancing and task execution time. An offline heuristic
algorithm for service placement to multiple cloudlets is
proposed in [99] which dynamically considers the distances
between the user and cloudlets. A stochastic method for the
offloading of task in real time environment is presented in
[59]. Like the previous model this method also considers
the distances between the user and the cloudlets for suc-
cessful task migration.
5.4 Vehicular edge networks
With the advent of high-speed internet technologies and
IoT, the connected vehicles have prevailed over the tradi-
tional vehicular Adhoc networks. The modern multimedia
and delay tolerant applications like autonomous driving
demand the stringent quality of service (QoS) in the
vehicular networks employed with benchmarked commu-
nication technologies and efficient decision systems.
Meeting such requirements is a challenge and strongly
constrained with high computational power, dynamic data
forwarding techniques, minimum congestion, and maxi-
mum response time with minimum service/execution
delay. In such densely populated network, the high-speed
private/public vehicles frequently and rapidly change their
locations and associations with the roadside units (RSU)
resulting in higher deadline misses, energy and resource
wastage.
Different studies have been proposed to handle the
mobility of users in VEN. In [100] the authors presented
Mobility-aware Computation Offloading in MEC based
Vehicular Wireless Networks (MACVWA) considering the
random mobility of the vehicles and handovers across the
RSUs. Each RSU holds an edge server to assist the vehicle
in task computation. The RSUs are interpointed with each
other through a support network, usually but not limited to
the metropolitan cellular network. The vehicular device
offloads the task and gets back its computation results.
During the transmission if handover occurs, the core net-
work transfers the executed content from old RSU com-
municates to the new one. The handover is determined
based on real-time signal to noise ratio (SNR). Velocity
variations are considered to be discrete values with the help
of Boundless Simulation Area mobility model (BSA)
[101]. The vehicular movements are consequently consid-
ered as Markovian chain.
Soft-VAN: Mobility-Aware Task Offloading in Soft-
ware-Defined Vehicular Network is another scheme [102]
to optimize the computational offloading and network
latency in vehicular networks. This SDN based
scheme works in two phases, node selection and task
computation. An integer linear program is formulated in
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the first phase to select the finest number of RSUs. In
contrast, non-linear optimization problem is formulated in
the second phase to minimize latency in task computation
considering the other system constraints as well. Due to its
NP-hard nature the computation problem is divided into
two sub-problems and solved by evolutionary algorithms.
First subproblem refers to the selection of optimal edge
server if the offloading is required. In second subproblem
the path required for downloading the completed task is
selected. The SDN controller predicts the best RSU and
associated edge server for vehicular user. Like many earlier
stated studies this scheme also used Markov model for
prediction activity while energy consumption and latency
has been improved.
A joint optimization framework known as Mobility-
Aware Edge Caching and Computing (MAECC) is pro-
posed in [103]. Caching and offloading is optimized using
multi-time scale Deep Q-Network (DQN) algorithm. The
model is specifically designed for limited storage and
computational resources at the user end and RSUs. The
model utilizes the RSUs and other vehicles on the road for
offloading or caching.
The authors in [104] proposed AVE: Autonomous
vehicular edge computing framework with ACO-based
scheduling approach for VEN. Global positioning system
(GPS) is exploited to track the vehicle‘s locations. Based
on GPS results moving vehicles are grouped into different
clusters inspired by ACO. The Intragroup task offloading is
then performed to optimize the task computation process
and reduce the latency. Similar approach is followed in
[105] and [106] to cooperatively use the vehicle resources
to enhance the computation and communication capacities
of the moving vehicles.
A spectrum leasing methodology is proposed for task
offloading in VENs [107]. The radio spectrum resources of
cellular network and RSUs of an edge network are jointly
leased to the vehicle requesting for task offloading. The
roadside units periodically broadcast the resource blocks of
available spectrum. The mobile devices in a VEN deter-
mine their bandwidth requirements based on their task
sizes and required computational power and time. The
spectrum is then allocated to those devices through
OFDMA technology.
A vehicular cloud is consisted of moving vehicles in an
SMDP-Based Resource Allocation in Vehicular Cloud
Computing Systems [108]. Each vehicle is assumed to have
equal computing and storage capacity. A central controller
collects the tasks needed to be offloaded, and delegates
them to the other vehicular nodes federated in cloud which
reduces the delay, saves energy, and efficiently utilizes the
resources. However, this is a sort of homogenous system
with single point of failure involved.
6 Comparisons
In the previous sections, we provided the detailed literature
review of task offloading techniques with respect to dif-
ferent optimization objectives, constraints, models, algo-
rithms, and support networks. In this section we first
compare the mobility models and then the generalized
offloading techniques used in mobile environments.
6.1 Comparison of mobility models
For task offloading in MEC some models use SDN based
techniques to handle the mobility and consider the user‘s
geographic location or recorded user mobility patterns.
SND based models do not consider the mobile user‘s tra-
jectory in real time. Then, some predictive models such as
Markov chain, exist that consider the real time network
performance and MEC server utilization. Markovian

Table 1 Features/parameters present in different mobility models

Mobility models Features
Geographic Recorded mobility Path Server MTTR Makespan User
location patterns prediction load Mobility

1 SDN based framework 4 9 9 9 9 9 9

[56]
2 Stochastic Models [59] 9 4 9 9 9 9 9
3 RWP based [62, 63] 9 9 4 9 9 9 4
4 RWP based [64] 9 9 9 9 4 4 4
5 RWP based [65, 109] 9 9 9 9 9 9 4
6 SLAW [66] 9 9 4 9 9 9 4
7 Head-light Model (HLM) 9 9 4 9 9 9 4
[70]

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Table 2 Features/parameters in offloading schemes in MEC

Offloading work areas in MEC Features/parameters
Energy Latency Load Mobility Channel State Execution
Consumption Balancing Prediction Information Time

1 Linear Search Algorithm [110] 9 4 9 9 9 4

2 Distributed cloud-aware power control (CaPC) 4 9 4 9 9 9
algorithm [28]
3 Multi-stage sequential game model [32] 4 4 9 9 9 9
4 Heuristic offloading decision algorithm 9 4 4 9 9 9
(HODA) [33]
5 Adaptive sequential task offloading (ASTO) 4 4 9 9 9 9
[34]
6 Energy-efficient computation offloading 4 9 4 9 9 9
(EECO) [35]
7 Genetic Algorithm based multi-objective 4 9 9 9 9 9
work-flow algorithm [36]
8 Minimized latency and energy consumption 4 4 9 9 9 4
[1, 9, 110, 111]
9 A 3-stage Task offloading [26]framework 9 9 9 9 4 4
10 Mixed-integer non-linear-programing problem 4 4 9 9 9 9
[112]

models are helpful to predict the future network conditions
and dynamic task assignment decisions but the complexity
of solving the problem and accuracy of cost modeling is
adversely proportional to each other. Performing compu-
tation offloading based on task completion time, is another
approach which exploits the genetic algorithms to evolve
the optimum solution. Random Way point and Leavy Walk
models are also used for user location prediction, by con-
sidering the mobility as a random function. However, the
aforesaid models lack to offer an optimal solution. RWP
offers better mobility prediction but increased task execu-
tion time and energy consumption. SLAW is suitable for
homogenous task offloading specifications for local users,
but its efficacy is low in delay sensitive networks.
In addition, the models based on user walk patterns
sometimes result in non-uniform stationary mobile node
distribution, increased energy consumption and execution
time. Then we have some heuristic based models which
generate good schedules for task offloading but ignore the
user motion information and have higher time complexity
so cannot be used in real time systems. In the Headlight
model there is no global view of the network entities and
resources, and it forecast the user locations based on sta-
tistical analysis of historical mobility record. Such tech-
niques cannot well predict the user location. Analysis also
showed that most of the above-mentioned works regarding
mobility-aware models are relatively simple, and straight-
movement based. Hence, it is needed to develop new
schemes which consider the dynamic mobility patterns to
optimize the task offloading. Table 1 summarizes the above
discussion.
6.2 Comparison of generalized offloading
techniques
The searching-based algorithms produce better offloading
decisions but the at the cost of higher computational
complexity. Game-theory based heuristic reduces the
energy and delay requirements at the same time. Multistage
task offloading framework classifies the mobile devices and
determine task priority then offload it to suitable sBSs. This
scheme also considers Interference, collisions and number
of contenders is also considered. Some schemes incorpo-
rate the multi-access characteristics of the next generation
5G networks for energy efficiency. Delay and resource
utilization can jointly be optimized by some techniques. A
joint optimization of task offloading and sBSs allocation
reduces the power consumption offset by the delay con-
straints. Genetic algorithm based multi-objective work-
flow-based computation offloading framework
concurrently considers energy consumption and task
deadline constraints while the task offloading to edge ser-
vers, but the user mobility and the topology changes were
not considered. Table 2 summarizes the previous
discussion.

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6.3 Comparison of mobility-aware offloading
techniques in mobile environments
This section summarizes the aforesaid mobility-aware
offloading techniques used in different mobile environ-
ments. We see that majority of the said works focus to
optimize energy, latency, and execution time. We extend
our discussion to these three performance parameters.
6.3.1 Energy efficiency
DMPO minimizes the offloading path after user movement.
It predicts the user data size and next location for very short
term. It does not outperform when the base stations are not
equidistant. EMM categorizes the information in two
classes. First contains the user task size, its location and no
of base stations. The second class contains channel state
information. The user handoffs are energy consumption is
minimized based on those classes. MAWOSS first make a
ready queue of tasks then based on distance between user
and offloading site, select the suitable server for task
offloading. It does not work well in multiuser system.
In heuristics-based techniques the HMAOA outperforms
for high-speed moving users. It predicts the user next
location by foreseeing both computational and spectral
resources. Migration energy and offloading energy are
considered for optimization in MAEO using machine
learning algorithm. GCFSA provides solution for those
users who move away just after submitting the offloading
data. It predicts a sojourn time to minimize the probability
of migrations and reduces the offloading failures. MAGA is
another effort to reduce the offloading failures and energy
consumption but its complexity is higher. ENDA predicts
the user next location using GPS and Open MP. Its scope is
limited to small area. Mobi-IoST is a collaborative
framework to handle mobility in different mobile envi-
ronments. A central cloud periodically monitors the mobile
nodes and facilitates them in task offloading from one edge
server to the other one. Its uses Markov model for pre-
diction along with energy saving. Similarly, URMILA also
observes the users but in real time. It also reduces the
energy consumption but cannot be used in complex and
multithread dependent applications. MACVWA uses the
SNR values and velocity variations to predict the user
mobility and energy saving. Soft-VAN uses SDN with
Markov chains to optimize the energy consumption.
6.3.2 Latency/delay minimization
MAWOSS is a mobility aware task offloading technique
that reduces the latency of the offloaded task. The fastest
and nearest edge server is selected considering the distance
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Cluster Computing
from the end user. In MDSP an SDN controller using
Lyapunov optimization technique reduces the computation
and service delay. It does optimize the queuing delay. For
high-speed edge users HMAOA technique is presented that
predicts locations with the help of channel state informa-
tion. It reduces the latency, but mobility prediction is not
for long term.
A deep reinforcement learning technique M-DRL using
glimpse mobility model predicts a series of next possible
location. Due to its two-dimensional foreseeing feature, the
distance between user and edge server is well optimized
resulting in least reported delay. Another similar scheme is
MAESP which is context-aware delay minimization
framework enabled with mobility prediction feature.
Another interesting approach is SGAN. To enhance the
prediction accuracy, it not only considers the moving pat-
terns of a certain user but also the mobility behavior of the
other users residing in the vicinity. With such efficient
location prediction, it optimizes the involved delays as
well.
MAEO is a Dijkstra algorithm-based technique that
groups the users with same mobility and computation
constraints in homogenous groups. It creates the shortest
paths to resolve the task interdependencies and optimizes
the latency by considering migration and offloading cost.
GCFSA is an algorithm which operates by considering the
post mobility effects. It also reduces the offloading failures
which ultimately reduce the delays.
6.3.3 Execution time
The execution time of tasks is one of the important per-
formance parameters to be considered while taking
offloading decisions in the mobile environments. It
becomes more critical in vehicular edge networks, since
the self-driving cars cannot afford the delays caused due to
greater execution time of the offloaded tasks. Apart from
mobility prediction the task size can also be predicted as
performed in DMPO. Although, the prediction is for short
term even then the ultimate objectives can be achieved.
The only limitation of DMPO is it assumes the distribution
of base stations to be even, which is somewhat unrealistic.
EMM focus on energy saving. However, for its operation it
required to classify the incoming set task based on their
execution time. The aforesaid data centric nature of the
algorithm enables it to optimize the execution times of
task.
Similar approach is adopted in MAWOSS which works
only in single user environment. HMAOA is designed for
high-speed moving devices. While taking offloading deci-
sions it considers the task execution time along other
parameters. However, due to its week mobility prediction
capability, the tasks needed to offload or cached again and
Cluster Computing

Table 3 Comparison of mobility-aware task offloading techniques in mobile environments

Offloading schemes in Features/parameters
MEC
Energy Latency Load Execution Channel state Distance between user Offloading
Efficiency Reduction Balancing Time information & offloading site failures
reduction

1 MEC MobMig [11] 4 9 4 9 9 9 9

2 DMPO [113] 4 9 9 4 9 9 9
3 EMM [114] 4 9 4 4 4 9 9
4 MAWOSS 4 4 9 4 9 9 9
[83]
5 MDSP [84] 9 4 9 9 4 9 9
6 HMAOA [86] 4 4 9 4 4 4 9
7 (M-DRL) [87] 9 4 9 9 9 4 9
8 MAESP [88] 9 4 9 9 9 4 9
9 SGAN based 9 4 9 9 9 9 4
[89]
10 MAEO [90] 4 4 9 9 9 9 9
11 FOG GCFSA [91] 4 4 9 9 9 9 4
12 MAGA [92] 4 9 9 4 9 9 4
13 ENDA [93] 4 9 4 9 9 9 9
14 Mobi-IoST 4 4 9 9 9 4 9
[94]
15 URMILA [95] 4 4 4 9 9 4 9
16 EFMEC [97] 4 4 9 9 9 9 9
17 VEN MACVWA 4 4 9 4 4 4 9
[100]
18 Soft-VAN 4 4 9 9 9 9 9
[102]
19 MAECC 9 9 9 9 9 9 4
[103]
20 AVE [104] 9 4 9 9 9 4 9
21 Spectrum 9 4 9 9 9 4 4
Leasing
[107]
22 SMDP [108] 4 4 4 9 9 9 9

again cannot be executed. MAGA is an evolutionary
algorithm that well optimizes the energy usage, latency,
and execution time of task, but at the cost of higher com-
putational complexity. Table 3 summarizes the previous
discussion.
7 Future research challenges
and opportunities
In previous sections, we showed that MEC has got plenty
of attention because of efficient resource and service pro-
visioning close to the user end. MEC enables offloading of
real time, resource hungry and multimedia applications to
the proximate servers while optimizing the energy costs
and delay. Since MEC is a developing technology, there is
still enough room for improvement and research, which
needs attention of both industry and academia. In the
subsequent sections, first we discuss some open research
challenges and opportunities at a glance, related to scala-
bility (Sect. 6.1), and security (Sect. 6.2). Conclusively, we
present in detail the mobility related research challenges
and opportunities as a crux of the survey in (Sect. 6.3).
7.1 Scalability
Scalability is one of the critical components of mobile edge
networks. Various studies are discussed earlier that propose
the scalable offloading solutions. They include different
resource provisioning and task allocation schemes in the

123

MEC network. Further, some techniques exploit the edge
server capacity, to balance the workload across the net-
work. Some techniques use task aggregation and prioriti-
zation mechanism. Some techniques focus to offload tasks
by foreseeing the channel conditions. Some studies pro-
posed mutual coordination-based solutions for scalable
offloading decisions. Moreover, existing studies mainly
focus on the offloading, caching and mobility management
to optimize the network performance using centralized
SDN technology. One central SDN controller cannot
effectively scale down the network resources and service
provisioning and can suffer single of failure. The distri-
bution of SDN controller to lower level controllers can
balance the network load and provide better control of the
system in large scale networks [27]. Thus, developing an
edge cloud-level service orchestrator to induce flexible
manageability can also improve the network scalability.
We could not find notable works related to scalable system
design in MEC. Further, some novel technique that forms
clusters of the edge devices (an IoT layer) that classifies
and group the similar tasks. The cluster can be formed
based on the tasks‘ computational requirement, priority,
and delay requirements, which is a worthful research area
to be explored. We could not find a study in this direction
that uses the clustering mechanism to scale up the edge
network.
7.2 Security, privacy and reliability
MEC systems are usually more resource constrained than
centralized cloud systems and are more prone to the
security attacks. Security is a critical challenge in edge
paradigm ecosystem due to several factors discussed ear-
lier. The edge networks involve different enabling tech-
nologies like; wireless networks, distributed systems and
virtualization platforms [41]. Several security protocols are
proposed for fully connected mesh networks, however their
applicability in mobile edge networks is questionable due
to the intermittent connectivities in MEC. Though, some
studies cover the secure communication aspects in Mobile
cloud networks [42]. However, such solutions do not well
suit for mobile edge networks, because the working sur-
roundings of edge devices may face several new threats
different from MCC [27]. More elaborately, the security
mechanism should be unaware of the intruder‘s channel
state information (CSI). To the best of our knowledge no
notable study offers secure task offloading without know-
ing the user CSI.
Further, we noticed that the technical limitations of edge
and IoT devices lack the hardware protection as compared
to commodity servers in centralized systems. Another
important aspect of security in MEC is the secure authen-
tication. The traditional solutions do not handle the
123
Cluster Computing
intrusions effectively [115], hence the exploration of new
methods to mitigate the intrusions is also worth doing.
Reliable computation is a vital requirement to enhance the
uptime of network resources. The edge networks are dis-
tributed in nature and can easily be targeted by DoS
attacks. Thus, working on some proactive defense mea-
sures to ensure the network and data integrity would be an
exciting research area. Additionally, in layered architec-
tures like MEC, the fault tolerance plays vital role in
successful execution of user submitted tasks [116]. Hence,
the protection and restoration mechanisms across different
layers of MEC would improve the availability of comput-
ing and caching resources. Ensuring the user data privacy
in MEC, specifically in D2D communication it is hard to
offer trusted services at the network edges.
7.3 Mobility awareness in mobile environments
Various mobility aware models to handle the task
offloading in MEC have been discussed earlier. Those
models consider different performance parameters to
optimize the system efficiency. Some models use SDN
based techniques to handle the mobility and consider the
device location and perform averaging functions to predict
the user locations. Some other predictive models consider
the real time network performance and MEC server uti-
lization. Random Way point and Leavy Walk models are
also used for user location prediction. Nevertheless, the
aforesaid models lack to offer an optimal solution as they
are unable to predict locations based on realistic user tra-
jectories. The stochastic models increase the time com-
plexity. The random walk models escalate the power
consumption and execution time. We also noted that the
said models are relatively simple. Therefore, exploring new
schemes which consider the dynamic and realistic mobility
patterns to optimize the prediction accuracy and enhance
the task offloading process would be an appealing research
direction.
Existing techniques explored yet handle computation
offloading and real-mobility management separately.
Hence, the impact of mobility on some state-of-the-art
computation offloading techniques is evident to be ana-
lyzed. Without considering the real-time mobility factors,
such as channel conditions, MEC servers’ utilization, and
network traffic load, computation offloading techniques
produce sub-optimal task assignment. Such sub-optimal
task placement has adverse effects on QoS and energy
consumption [117]. There is an opportunity to develop a
unified approach that jointly considers computation
offloading and mobility management.
Further, the suitable mobility models for accurately
modeling user movement in real-time MEC scenarios are
also a challenging task. The user mobility traces in mobile
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edge networks can be expressed as non-linear function due
to random movements of mobile user [118]. Such linear
data can further leverage the machine learning based pat-
tern recognition techniques to improve the computation
offloading in MEC. We explored that majority works
related to mobility prediction are based on reinforcement
learning (RL) due to its high accuracy [77]. However, RL
based models involve higher time complexity due to its
online learning procedures and can increase the latency of
the MEC system [77]. As mentioned earlier, the user
mobility traces are considered as historical records of the
mobile users at different geographic location [119]. Those
records also contain the user speed, direction, and distance
from the base station. For such hand-crafted features and
nonlinear location information, using deep neural networks
(DNN), fuzzy logic, genetic algorithms and RL based
algorithms is not a practical approach in context of latency
and energy consumption. Therefore, developing some
novel light weight techniques with optimal latency to
predict the user location is a very interesting and needful
research opportunity. For instance, on offline learning
model that uses time series analysis with simple artificial
neural network (ANN) technique can be used to predict the
user locations [120].
In addition, the current communication protocols and
mobility management schemes do not address the high-
speed user, which can also be an interesting area to be
figured out. In existing mobility management schemes,
machine learning techniques are applied only between the
mobile node and edge server to predict the next possible
location. However, in D2D communication/offloading the
repercussions of user mobility and offloading site selection
would be different and challenging than conventional
offloading scenarios. Hence developing D2D mobility
models with intelligence would be an interesting research
direction.
Moreover, we also noted that there are few studies
focusing on mobility in cloudlets. Even those studies have
ignored some critical issues. For instance, till now the
studies related to mobility aware offloading mostly handle
the offloading between single computing server and mul-
tiple mobile users. However, in cloudlets the edge resour-
ces form a federated cloud where single mobile users
offloading request may be distributed among more than one
edge server, delegated by cloud controller. Handling the
mobility here is a challenging task. Further, in such sce-
nario the communication cost/delay optimization between
edge nodes to share the execution results is highly ques-
tionable. Like MEC and FOG, the reinforcement learning
techniques with predictive capabilities can be implied here
to smartly handle the initial offloading process.
8 Conclusion
In this article, we presented a detailed survey of mobility
aware MEC offloading techniques. The mobility of UE can
lead to several challenges during the process of MEC
offload such as intermittent connectivity, security, and
reliability. As a result, machine learning, and nature
inspired algorithms have been proposed to predict and
manage user mobility for efficient MEC offloading
frameworks. We presented the taxonomy of the state-of-
the-art MEC offloading frameworks in terms of objectives,
constraints, mobility models, algorithms, and support net-
works. We listed a detailed literature review and compar-
ison of fog, cloudlet, vehicular networks and MEC based
mobility-aware offloading frameworks. At last, we listed
research challenges in the form of security, reliability, and
scalability for mobility aware MEC offloading frameworks.
Acknowledgement The authors would like to thank the Deanship of
Scientific Research at Umm Al-Qura University for supporting this
work by Grant Code: 19-COM-1-01-0016.
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Cluster Computing
Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to
jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Sardar Khaliq uz Zaman is a
Ph.D. Scholar at Department of
Information Technology Hazara
University Mansehra, Pakistan
since 2018. He has done MS
(Computer Science) in 2014
from Department of Computer
Science, COMSATS University
Islamabad (CUI) Abbottabad
Campus, Pakistan He joined the
same Institute as Lecturer in
2015. His areas of interest/pub-
lications include: Mobile Edge
Networks, Large-scale Comput-
ing systems, Social Informatics,
Cloud Computing and Data Centers Systems. With 6 years of research
and teaching experience, he has published different articles in inter-
national journals and conferences. He is an active member of Scalable
Processing and Analytics Research in Communications (SPARC) Lab
at CUI, Abbottabad Campus.
Ali Imran Jehangiri is a Lecturer
in the Department of Informa-
tion Technology, Hazara
University, Mansehra, Pakistan.
He received Ph.D. degree in
Computer Science from the
Georg-August-University Goet-
tingen, Germany in 2015. He
gained industrial experience
with Service Computing work-
ing as research assistant at
GWDG. He is involved in
research activities dealing with
parallel, Grid computing, Cloud
computing and Big data. He is
author of several publications in international journals, and
conferences.
Tahir Maqsood Tahir Maqsood
received the M.Sc. degree in
computer networks from
Northumbria University, U.K.,
in 2007, and the Ph.D. degree in
computer science from COM-
SATS University Islamabad,
Pakistan, in 2017. He is cur-
rently an Assistant Professor
with COMSATS University
Islamabad, Abbottabad Campus,
Pakistan. His research interests
include resource allocation,
multi/manycore systems, reli-
able systems, Internet of Things,
and edge computing systems.
Zulfiqar Ahmad is Ph.D. Scholar
in Department of Information
Technology Hazara University
Mansehra, Pakistan. He has
received his M.Sc. (Computer
Science) degree from Hazara
University Mansehra, Pakistan
in 2011 and M.S. (C.S.) degree
from COMSATS Institute of
Information Technology,
Abbottabad, KPK, Pakistan in
2016. His research interest is
Cloud Computing, High Perfor-
mance Computing, and Scien-
tific Workflows Execution.
Arif Iqbal Umar did his Ph.D.
from China in 2010, M.S. in
2006, M.Sc. in 1991 and B.Sc.
in 1987. He is Professor of
Computer Science in the
Department of Information
Technology, Hazara University
Pakistan. He has teaching and
administration experience of 24
years. He has published 55
research papers in different
conferences and journals of
international repute. His
research interest includes Data
Mining, Machine Learning,
Databases, Network Security and Secure Communications in IoT.
Junaid Shuja completed his
B.S. in Computer and Informa-
tion Science from PIEAS,
Islamabad, in 2009 and M.S. in
Computer Science from CIIT
Abbottabad, in 2012. He com-
pleted his Ph.D. from University
of Malaya, Malaysia in 2017.
His Ph.D. thesis focused on
execution of SIMD instructions
on heterogeneous mobile and
cloud platforms. He is an
Assistant Professor at CUI,
Abbottabad Campus, Pakistan.
His research interests include
application of machine learning techniques in edge computing, energy
efficient cloud data centers, and mobile cloud computing. He has
published research in more than 30 International journals and con-
ferences. He serves as Associate Editor at IEEE Access.
123
 Cluster Computing

Eisa Alanazi received his B.Sc.
degree in Information Systems
from King Saud University, in
2007, and the MSc and PhD
degree from the University of
Regina, Canada in 2011 and
2017 respectively. He is cur-
rently an Assistant Professor at
the Department of Computer
Science, College of Computers
and Information Systems in
Umm Al-Qura University in
Saudi Arabia. His research
interests include preference
learning and reasoning.
CSAIL Laboratory, MIT, from 2016 to 2017. He subsequently joined
the College of Computer and Information Systems, Umm Al-Qura
University, as an Assistant Professor of computer engineering. His
mobility impact on the IEEE 802.11p article is among the most cited
Ad Hoc Networks journal articles list. He published articles in pres-
tigious conferences and journals, such as the IEEE TRANSACTIONS
ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY and the IEEE COMMUNICA-
TIONS SURVEYS AND TUTORIALS. His current research interests
include mobile computing, ubiquitous sensing, and intelligent trans-
portation systems.

Waleed Alasmary received the

B.Sc. degree (Hons.) in Com-
puter Engineering from Umm
Al-Qura University, Saudi Ara-
bia, in 2005, the M.A.Sc. degree
in electrical and computer
engineering from the University
of Waterloo, Canada, in 2010,
and the Ph.D. degree in Elec-
trical and Computer Engineer-
ing from the University of
Toronto, Toronto, Canada, in
2015. During his Ph.D. degree,
he was a Visiting Research
Scholar with Network Research
Laboratory, UCLA, in 2014. He was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar with

123

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