A Review of Task Offloading Techniques for Edge-Cloud Computing

Abstract

The rapid proliferation of mobile devices, exceeding 7.1 billion users globally in 2024, has completely transformed the way communicate, work, interact with technology on a daily basis. This surge has introduced new challenges in computational capabilities and user experiences, prompting a shift towards distributed computing paradigms such as cloud-edge computing. Cloud computing has provided extensive computational resources to mobile devices, with edge computing further enhancing performance by localising computation and storage, which in return reduces latency. In response to the increasing complexity of mobile applications, task offloading has emerged as a vital optimization strategy, allowing resourceconstrained devices to delegate tasks to more powerful cloud or edge resources, promoting faster, energy-aware execution. This paper analyzes some of the existing task offloading methods, particularly in the context of edge-cloud computing, through a comprehensive study of current methodologies, benefits and limitations.