Cooperative End-Edge-Cloud Computing and Resource Allocation for Digital Twin Enabled 6G Industrial IoT

Abstract

End-edge-cloud (EEC) collaborative computing is regarded as one of the most promising technologies for the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). It offers effective solutions for managing computationally intensive and delay-sensitive tasks efficiently. Indeed, achieving intelligent manufacturing in the context of 6G networks requires the development of efficient resource scheduling schemes. However, improving the quality of service and resource management in the face of challenges like time-varying physical operating environments of IIoT, task heterogeneity, and the coupling of different resource types is undoubtedly a complex task. In this work, we propose a digital twin (DT) assisted EEC collaborative computing scheme, where DT is utilized to monitor the physical operating environment in real-time and determine the optimal strategy, and the potential deviation between the real values and DT estimates is also considered. We aim to minimize the system cost by optimizing device association, offloading mode, bandwidth allocation, and task split ratio. Our optimization is constrained by the maximum tolerable latency of the task while considering both latency and energy consumption. To solve the collaborative computation and resource allocation (CCRA) problem in the EEC, we propose an algorithm with DT based on Multi-Agent Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (MADDPG), where each user end (UE) in DT operates as an independent agent to determine the optimum offloading decision autonomously. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme, which can significantly improve the task success rate compared to benchmark schemes, while reducing the latency and energy consumption of task offloading with the assistance of DT.