These findings demonstrate that DI-MNA provides an effective balance between solution quality, scalability, and computational efficiency for resource allocation in large-scale IoT networks.
Abstract
The Multi-Node Allocation (MNA) problem in Internet of Things (IoT) networks arises when application requirements exceed the capacity of a single node, requiring job distribution across multiple devices. This problem is challenging in large-scale heterogeneous environments once it involves optimizing resource utilization, bandwidth consumption, and latency within a rapidly expanding search space. This paper proposes two scalable approaches: a greedy heuristic called Demand Index Multi-Node Allocation (DI-MNA) and a hybrid evolutionary algorithm (NSGA-Hyb) that combines DI-MNA with NSGA-III. Both methods use bounded combinatorial exploration and a normalized demand index to guide the search efficiently. The approaches are evaluated on IoT networks ranging from 10 to 1000 nodes under different workload conditions and compared with an optimal Branch and Bound (B&B) algorithm for small instances. Results show that DI-MNA achieves near-optimal solutions in small networks while maintaining low computational cost as network size grows. In large-scale scenarios, DI-MNA consistently matches or outperforms the evolutionary methods and sustains runtime speedups of up to 51× over NSGA-Hyb and more than 7.8×106 over B&B. These findings demonstrate that DI-MNA provides an effective balance between solution quality, scalability, and computational efficiency for resource allocation in large-scale IoT networks.
This work aims to design an efficient framework by incorporating a novel hybrid metaheuristic algorithm that combines Draco Lizard Optimization (DLO) and Sand Cat Optimization (SCO) for optimal task offloading and resource allocation for IoT applications.
Experiments show that the proposed Hybrid Framework for Joint Optimization of Resource Allocation and Load Balancing that spans two layers in heterogeneous cloud computing systems obtains 25-30% energy savings compared with ordinary methods, significantly reduces p95 latency and also achieves a relatively better Quality Of Service.
Eram Fatma, Nidhi Mishra, Mohammed Abdul Bari· Journal of Intelligent Decis...· 0 citations
The Internet of Things (IoT) has grown rapidly in recent years, enabling the interconnection of a large number of heterogeneous and distributed devices. This number is expected to exceed 70 billion according to Statista. With this massive scale, fulfilling complex IoT applications that require combinations of multiple objects remains a real challenge. Moreover, several Quality of Service (QoS) requirements must be satisfied, making the problem of selecting appropriate IoT services NP-hard. In such environments, task offloading is a key mechanism to efficiently distribute computational workloads across edge, fog, and cloud resources. However, selecting the optimal offloading decision remains a difficult NP-hard problem due to system heterogeneity and conflicting objectives. In this paper, we propose a GNN-DQN-based approach for task offloading in edge–fog–cloud environments. Unlike prior GNN-DQN approaches limited to single- or dual-tier architectures, our framework explicitly models heterogeneous node types and inter-tier communication links, enabling more balanced and scalable resource allocation. Experimental results show that GNN-DQN achieves a mean latency of 2.64 s, representing improvements of 70.2% over Random, 7.8% over DQN-only, and 3.5% over Greedy. A GNN-A2C baseline is also included to broaden the comparison with a modern DRL method. Despite sharing the same GNN encoder, it underperforms GNN-DQN across all metrics, confirming the superiority of the DQN learning backbone. These results highlight the effectiveness of integrating graph-based representation with reinforcement learning, while also revealing a trade-off between latency optimization and energy efficiency.
Sirine Hakim, Sonia Yassa· International Conference on...· 0 citations
This paper proposes a QoS-aware and energy-efficient metaheuristic optimization-based service placement strategy for an integrated IoT and fog computing environment to improve QoS and demonstrates that the developed hybrid algorithm reduces energy consumption by 3.09% and minimize network usage significantly compared with baselines.
Pallavi Mettupalli Venkata, Thatikonda Supraja, Priyanka Chawla et al.· Journal of Supercomputing· 0 citations
An in-depth comparison study is carried out on three population-based optimization algorithms for solving the placement problem of SFCs using Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), Ant Colony Optimization (ACO), and Grey Wolf Optimization (GWO) on three cases, with PSO emerging as the most consistently high-performing algorithm across all three scenarios.
Chandrapal Singh Dangi, Sanjay Sharma· International Journal of Adv...· 0 citations
Energy remains the most critical and limiting resource in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) and Internet of Things (IoT) systems, directly constraining network lifetime, scalability, and real-world deployability. Although multi-hop routing is widely adopted to reduce transmission energy and balance traffic load, recent solutions increasingly rely on metaheuristic optimization and machine learning techniques whose computational, control, and learning overhead is rarely accounted for. This leads to a fundamental energy–intelligence trade-off that challenges the sustainability of intelligent routing in resource-constrained environments. This paper presents a critical, energy-centric review of multi-hop routing approaches for IoT and WSNs proposed between 2018 and 2025. Heuristic, metaheuristic, dynamic and Heterogeneous routing, reinforcement learning, deep reinforcement learning, and explainable AI-based protocols are systematically analyzed with an emphasis on net energy efficiency, scalability, feasibility on constrained devices, and model realism, rather than reported performance gains alone. The analysis reveals that energy is predominantly treated as a secondary optimization objective rather than as a governing system constraint. To address this limitation, we propose a hybrid and explainable routing framework governed by energy awareness, in which intelligence activation is explicitly conditioned on its net energy benefit. This perspective provides a principled foundation for sustainable and trustworthy intelligent routing in next-generation IoT and WSN systems.
Moez Elarfaoui, Hamdi Ouechtati, Nadia Ben Azzouna· International Conference on...· 0 citations