Distributed deep reinforcement learning for functional split control in energy harvesting virtualized small cells
File(s)TMGD_TSC20.pdf (3.97 MB)
Accepted version
Author(s)
Temesgene, Dagnachew Azene
Miozzo, Marco
Gunduz, Deniz
Dini, Paolo
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
To meet the growing quest for enhanced network capacity, mobile network operators (MNOs) are deploying dense infrastructures of small cells. This, in turn, increases the power consumption of mobile networks, thus impacting the environment. As a result, we have seen a recent trend of powering mobile networks with harvested ambient energy to achieve both environmental and cost benefits. In this paper, we consider a network of virtualized small cells (vSCs) powered by energy harvesters and equipped with rechargeable batteries, which can opportunistically offload baseband (BB) functions to a grid-connected edge server depending on their energy availability. We formulate the corresponding grid energy and traffic drop rate minimization problem, and propose a distributed deep reinforcement learning (DDRL) solution. Coordination among vSCs is enabled via the exchange of battery state information. The evaluation of the network performance in terms of grid energy consumption and traffic drop rate confirms that enabling coordination among the vSCs via knowledge exchange achieves a performance close to the optimal. Numerical results also confirm that the proposed DDRL solution provides higher network performance, better adaptation to the changing environment, and higher cost savings with respect to a tabular multi-agent reinforcement learning (MRL) solution used as a benchmark.
Date Issued
2021-10-01
Date Acceptance
2020-09-01
Citation
IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Computing, 2021, 6 (4), pp.626-640
ISSN
2377-3782
Publisher
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Start Page
626
End Page
640
Journal / Book Title
IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Computing
Volume
6
Issue
4
Copyright Statement
© 2020 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.
Sponsor
Commission of the European Communities
Identifier
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9200734
Grant Number
675891
Subjects
Science & Technology
Technology
Computer Science, Hardware & Architecture
Computer Science, Information Systems
Telecommunications
Computer Science
Batteries
Heuristic algorithms
Learning (artificial intelligence)
Switches
Energy consumption
Energy harvesting
Power demand
Deep reinforcement learning
edge computing
energy harvesting
flexible functional splits
MEC
multi-agent reinforcement learning
virtualized small cells
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2020-09-18