A SDN-assisted Energy Saving Scheme for Cooperative Edge Computing Networks

In this paper, an edge device sleeping mechanism is proposed to save energy in cooperative edge computing networks. Energy saving in the proposed scheme is obtained by implementing a software-defined networking (SDN)-assisted interactive On/Off operation on edge devices taking into account the quality of service (QoS) experienced by end-users. First, an optimization problem is formulated to reduce the number of active edge devices under the queueing probability constraint. Herein, edge devices are modeled as M/M/k queueing systems, whereas the square-root staffing rule is used to maintain the queueing probability below desired levels. Then, a load balancing mechanism is carried out to reduce the variations in resource utilization among edge devices. To this end, a discrete-time Markov chain (DTMC)-based algorithm is implemented to achieve the intended load balancing. Results show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme in achieving energy saving and maintaining the queueing delay at controlled levels.