NOMA-Enabled Multiuser Offloading in Multicell Edge Computing Networks: A Coalition Game Based Approach

To support multiuser offloading with limited radio resources, non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has recently been extensively incorporated into multi-access edge computing (MEC). This study aims to minimize the weighted sum cost in terms of delay and energy consumption in NOMA-enabled multicell MEC networks. To this end, we formulate a joint radio resource allocation and offloading problem to fully unleash the potential of NOMA, by jointly considering all factors affecting the efficiency of NOMA, i.e., both the intra-cell and inter-cell interference,power control, and subchannel allocation. To tackle the intractable mixed-integer non-convex problem, we decouple the original optimization problem into a separated subchannel allocation problem and a power control problem. The subchannel allocation problem is formulated as a coalition game, by fully considering the user state switching from local computing to edge computing, and from the current communication channel to a better channel. And the power control problem is relaxed to a convex optimization problem. Then the solution can be found by iteratively solving these two sub-problems. Finally, numerical results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can effectively reduce the total cost in terms of energy consumption and delay compared to the existing baselines.