ACTS: An Ant Colony Based Transmission Scheduling Approach for Cloud Network Collaboration Environment

In traditional cloud computing research, it is often considered that the network resources between edge devices and cloud platform are sufficient, and the symmetry between the upward link from edge devices to the cloud platform and the downward link from cloud platform to edge devices is definite. However, in many application scenarios, the network resources between edge devices and cloud platform might be limited, and the link symmetry may not be guaranteed. To solve this problem, network relay nodes are introduced to realize the data transmission between edge devices and the cloud platform. The environment in which network relay nodes that can cooperate with the cloud platform is called cloud network collaborative environment (CNCE). In CNCE, how to optimize data transmission from edge devices to cloud platform through relay nodes has become one of the most important research topics. In this paper, we focus on the following two influencing factors that previous studies ignored: (1) the multi-link and multi-constraint transmission process; and (2) the timely resource state of the relay node. Taking these factors into consideration, we design a novel data transmission scheduling algorithm, called ant colony based transmission scheduling approach (ACTS). First, we propose a multi-link optimization mechanism to optimize the constraint limits. This mechanism divides the transmission into two links called the downlink relay link and uplink relay link. For the downlink relay link, we use the store-and-forward method for the optimization. For the uplink relay link, we use the min–min method for the optimization. We use the ant colony algorithm for the overall optimization of the two links. Finally, we improve the pheromone update rule of the ant colony algorithm to avoid the algorithm from falling into a local optimum. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our proposed approach has better results in transmission efficiency than other advanced algorithms.