Energy-efficient Edge Server Management for Edge Computing: A Game-theoretical Approach

Abstract

Similar to cloud servers which are well-known energy consumers, edge servers running 24/7 jointly consume a tremendous amount of energy and thus require energy-saving management. However, the unique characteristics of edge computing make it a new and challenging problem to manage edge servers in an energy-efficient manner. First, an individual edge server is usually used to serve a specific region. The temporal distribution of end-users in the area impacts the edge server’s energy utilization. Second, multiple base stations may cover an end-user simultaneously and the end-user can be served by the physical machines attached to any of the base stations. Serving the end-users in an area with minimum physical machines can minimize the edge servers’ overall energy consumption. Third, physical machines facilitating an edge server can be powered off individually when not needed to minimize the edge server’s energy consumption. We formulate this Energy-efficient Edge Server Management (EESM) problem and analyze its problem hardness. Next, a game-theoretical approach, i.e., EESM-G, is proposed to address EESM problems efficiently. The superior performance of EESM-G is tested on a public real-world dataset.