Abstract
This paper investigates a cell-free massive multipleinput
multiple-output enabled multi-access edge computing
(termed CF-MEC) system, where multiple users are served by
multiple central processing units (CPUs) and their connected
access points (APs), both of which are equipped with computation
resources. For this system, a dynamic user-centric task offloading
scheme is designed to provide seamless and efficient computation
services for users. Based on this scheme, the joint optimization
of user-centric AP clustering, edge server selection, communication
and computation resources is formulated as a longterm
problem to minimize the average energy consumption. The
formulated problem is complicated non-convex due to the highly
coupled time-varying discrete and continuous variables, resulting
in high complexity and non-real-time to obtain the optimal
solution. To tackle this challenging problem, we propose a multilayer
hierarchical multi-agent deep reinforcement learning (MLHMADRL)
based resource allocation algorithm. Specifically, the
proposed algorithm incorporates a hierarchical structure with
high, middle, and low-level agents that iteratively train the actorcritic
networks to obtain discrete and continuous variables of the
formulated problem. To further enhance the training effectiveness
by leveraging the CF-MEC system, we design distinct actorcritic
networks for the agents at different levels to facilitate
centralized training and distributed execution. Simulation results
validate the training stability of the proposed algorithm at
each level, and demonstrate the superiority of the proposed
algorithm over benchmark schemes in terms of the average
energy consumption, providing a stable distributed framework
for practical implementation in dynamic environments.