RedTops: real-time energy-aware dynamic task offloading via federated mountain gazelle optimisation in SDN-enhanced edge computing

Offloading computational tasks is vital for real-time applications on mobile devices with limited resources. Mobile edge computing (MEC) is deemed a solution that puts computational resources closer to users. Nevertheless, there are many associated concerns during the offloading procedure (i.e., privacy, delay, and high energy consumption). Federated learning (FL) has been considered a solution to address MEC’s data privacy issues; however, it comes with its own resource consumption issues. To address these issues, this paper proposes a distributed learning paradigm inspired by FL. We propose an optimisation technique for offloading computational tasks that aims to reduce both total delay and energy consumption by using the mountain gazelle optimisation algorithm, which shows it can reduce both delay and energy consumption in dynamic situations. Additionally, an improved variant known as the improved mountain gazelle optimiser is integrated into a distributed SDN controller architecture to create an offloading policy model for optimal edge node selection. We also present a new SDN-enabled edge computing architecture that achieves the best task distribution through task offloading using federated mountain gazelle optimisation (RedTops). Energy usage, delay, and bandwidth are considered by RedTops, which successfully addresses high training costs, dependability issues, and privacy concerns in MEC. Based on the outcomes of five extensive simulations, RedTops is more energy-efficient and faster at completing tasks than four state-of-the-art offloading methods (DDLO, DROO, DRL without TL and SDN, and DTRL).