Hybrid Reinforcement Learning-based Sustainable Multi-User Computation Offloading for Mobile Edge-Quantum Computing

Abstract

Exploiting quantum computing at the mobile edge holds immense potential for facilitating large-scale network design, processing multimodal data, optimizing resource management, and enhancing network security. In this paper, we propose a pioneering paradigm of mobile edge quantum computing (MEQC) that integrates quantum computing capabilities into classical edge computing servers that are proximate to mobile devices. To conceptualize the MEQC, we first design an MEQC system, where mobile devices can offload classical and quantum computation tasks to edge servers equipped with classical and quantum computers. We then formulate the hybrid classical-quantum computation offloading problem whose goal is to minimize system cost in terms of latency and energy consumption. To solve the offloading problem efficiently, we propose a hybrid discrete-continuous multi-agent reinforcement learning algorithm to learn long-term sustainable offloading and partitioning strategies. Finally, numerical results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can reduce the MEQC system cost by up to 30% compared to existing baselines.