Using Deep Reinforcement Learning for Application Relocation in Multi-Access Edge Computing

Multi-access edge computing (MEC) brings data and computational resources near mobile users, with the ultimate goal of reducing latency, improving resource utilization, and leveraging context and radio awareness. Relocation policies for applications in the MEC environment are necessary to guarantee its effectiveness and performance, and can use a multitude of different data (user position and direction, availability of MEC services and computation resources, etc.). In this article, we advocate using deep reinforcement learning to relocate applications in MEC scenarios, by having MEC learn during the evolution of the system. We show the feasibility of this approach and highlight its benefits via simulation, also presenting an environment that can foster future research on this topic.