{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,10]],"date-time":"2026-03-10T15:23:41Z","timestamp":1773156221721,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":31,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"9","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2021,4,30]],"date-time":"2021-04-30T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1619740800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"National Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai","award":["20ZR1400700"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["20ZR1400700"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>With the exponential growth of mobile devices and the emergence of computationally intensive and delay-sensitive tasks, the enormous demand for data and computing resources has become a big challenge. Fortunately, the combination of mobile edge computing (MEC) and ultra-dense network (UDN) is considered to be an effective way to solve these challenges. Due to the highly dynamic mobility of mobile devices and the randomness of the work requests, the load imbalance between MEC servers will affect the performance of the entire network. In this paper, the software defined network (SDN) is applied to the task allocation in the MEC scenario of UDN, which is based on routing of corresponding information between MEC servers. Secondly, a new load balancing algorithm based on load estimation by user load prediction is proposed to solve the NP-hard problem in task offloading. Furthermore, a genetic algorithm (GA) is used to prove the effectiveness and rapidity of the algorithm. At present, if the load balancing algorithm only depends on the actual load of each MEC, it usually leads to ping-pong effect. It is worth mentioning that our method can effectively reduce the impact of ping-pong effect. In addition, this paper also discusses the subtask offloading problem of divisible tasks and the corresponding solutions. At last, simulation results demonstrate the efficiency of our method in balancing load among MEC servers and its ability to optimize systematic stability.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s21093135","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2021,4,30]],"date-time":"2021-04-30T10:53:29Z","timestamp":1619780009000},"page":"3135","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":23,"title":["Enhancing Mobile Edge Computing with Efficient Load Balancing Using Load Estimation in Ultra-Dense Network"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"21","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-9850-5864","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Wen","family":"Chen","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Information Science and Technology, Donghua University, Shanghai 201620, China"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-6554-9254","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Yongqi","family":"Zhu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Information Science and Technology, Donghua University, Shanghai 201620, China"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-1293-6239","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jiawei","family":"Liu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Information Science and Technology, Donghua University, Shanghai 201620, China"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-4129-6285","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Yuhu","family":"Chen","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Information Science and Technology, Donghua University, Shanghai 201620, China"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2021,4,30]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2322","DOI":"10.1109\/COMST.2017.2745201","article-title":"A Survey on Mobile Edge Computing: The Communication Perspective","volume":"19","author":"Mao","year":"2017","journal-title":"IEEE Commun. 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