Transformer-Based Distributed Task Offloading and Resource Management in Cloud-Edge Computing Networks

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Mingqi Han, Xinghua Sun, Xijun Wang, Wen Zhan, Xiang Chen

Published: 01 Jan 2025, Last Modified: 15 Oct 2025IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun. 2025EveryoneRevisionsBibTeXCC BY-SA 4.0
Abstract: Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems (ICPS) have emerged as a critical component in the industrial domain. To facilitate seamless collaboration among massive devices, cloud-edge computing architectures have emerged as a key enabler for ICPS, leveraging distributed intelligence to orchestrate devices and computational tasks. In cloud-edge computing, efficient task offloading and resource management are essential for optimizing task performance and reducing energy costs. However, conventional centralized resource management strategies struggle to satisfy the real-time, adaptability, and performance demands of dynamic ICPS systems. In this paper, we propose the Distributed Transformer-based Actor-Critic (DTAC) algorithm to jointly determine task offloading and resource management decisions in cloud-edge computing networks, particularly for delay-sensitive applications in ICPS. The DTAC algorithm integrates the powerful transformer model with the popular actor-critic architecture to address the challenge of a hybrid high-dimensional action space. We first train a centralized model to learn coordination among user equipments (UEs) and then introduce a decentralized transfer learning (TL) approach to efficiently adapt the centralized model into the DTAC framework. Using the DTAC model, each UE can independently manage its local resources based solely on local information, avoiding the significant signaling overhead inherent in centralized approaches. Simulation results demonstrate that DTAC not only outperforms other MARL and TL schemes in both small- and large-scale scenarios, but also exhibits strong generalization capabilities in inexperienced settings. Furthermore, DTAC and decentralized TL approaches significantly reduce training costs by 73% compared to other methods, making them more practical for ICPS deployment.