Patent Publication Number: US-2022237515-A1

Title: Technologies for distributing gradient descent computation in a heterogeneous multi-access edge computing (mec) networks

Description:
RELATED APPLICATIONS 
     The present application is a continuation of U.S. application Ser. No. 16/235,682 filed on Dec. 28, 2018, which claims priority under 35 U.S.C. § 119 to U.S. Provisional App. No. 62/728,640 filed on Sep. 7, 2018 and U.S. Provisional App. No. 62/728,647 filed on Sep. 7, 2018, the contents of each of which are hereby incorporated by reference in their entireties. 
    
    
     FIELD 
     Various embodiments generally relate to the fields of computing, and in particular, relate to MEC (“Multi-access Edge Computing” or “Mobile Edge Computing”) technologies. 
     BACKGROUND 
     The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section. 
     Many forms of machine learning (ML), such as supervised learning, perform a training process on a relatively large dataset to estimate an underlying ML model. Linear regression is one type of supervised ML algorithm that is used for classification, stock market analysis, weather prediction, and the like. Gradient descent (GD) algorithms are often used in linear regression. Given a function defined by a set of parameters, a GD algorithm starts with an initial set of parameter values, and iteratively moves toward a set of parameter values that minimize the function. This iterative minimization is achieved by taking steps in the negative direction of the function gradient. Example use cases for GD algorithms include localization in wireless sensor networks and distributed path-planning for drones. 
     In typical GD implementations, a model is updated iteratively, where computing multiplication of large matrices and vectors are required in each epoch. Since the training phase for GD algorithms requires a large amount of iterative computations, running GD algorithms can be computationally intensive. Additionally, computation time bottlenecks rapidly as the model order grows in size. 
     Distributed computing has been used to reduce training time by offloading GD computations to multiple secondary computing nodes located in a server farm, for example. In this approach, during each training epoch (or iteration), partial gradients are computed by different secondary nodes and communicated to a master node for aggregation in order to obtain a complete gradient for that epoch. Since this approach involves duplicating the training dataset for each secondary node, it is limited to homogeneous computing environments included the same or similar computing systems that are connected to one another via deterministic wired links. 
     However, distributing GP computations to heterogeneous computing environments, such as those comprising multiple client or edge devices is difficult because, in most cases, the available edge devices have different configurations, capabilities, and operate under different conditions. Additionally, many of the edge devices communicate using wireless links, which have lower reliability (i.e., in terms of link quality and achievable data rates) when compared to wired links used in server farms. The heterogeneous nature of these computing environments may result in longer lag times at each training epoch due to slower computing devices and/or computing devices with low quality radio links. For these reasons, the conventional distributed ML training approach cannot be straightforwardly applied to heterogeneous computing environments. 
    
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES 
       Embodiments will be readily understood by the following detailed description in conjunction with the accompanying drawings. To facilitate this description, like reference numerals designate like structural elements. Embodiments are illustrated by way of example and not by way of limitation in the figures of the accompanying drawings. 
         FIG. 1  depicts an example heterogeneous computing environment in which various example embodiments may be practiced. 
         FIGS. 2-5  show example distributed ML procedures in accordance with various embodiments. In particular,  FIG. 2  depicts an example distributed machine learning procedure according to a first embodiment,  FIG. 3  depicts a load partitioning process according to the first embodiment,  FIG. 4  depicts an example distributed machine learning procedure according to a second embodiment, and  FIG. 5  depicts a load partitioning process according to the second embodiment. 
         FIG. 6  depicts an example Multi-access edge Computing (MEC) framework in accordance with some embodiments. 
         FIG. 7  depicts an example MEC system architecture according to various embodiments. 
         FIG. 8  depicts an example an example MEC system architecture in a Network Function Virtualization (NFV) environment according to various embodiments. 
         FIG. 9  depicts an example of infrastructure equipment according to various embodiments. 
         FIG. 10  depicts an example of a computer platform according to various embodiments. 
         FIG. 11  illustrates an example non-transitory computer-readable storage media that may be suitable for use to store instructions (or data that creates the instructions) that cause an apparatus, in response to execution of the instructions by the apparatus, to practice selected aspects of the present disclosure. 
         FIG. 12  illustrates an arrangement showing interconnections that may be present between a network and Internet of Things (IoT) networks, according to various embodiments. 
         FIG. 13  illustrates an example domain topology according to various embodiments. 
         FIG. 14  illustrates an example cloud computing network or cloud in communication with a number of IoT devices according to various embodiments. 
         FIG. 15  illustrates an arrangement of a cloud computing network or cloud in communication with a mesh network of IoT devices or IoT fog according to various embodiments. 
     
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION 
     The present disclosure is related to distributed machine learning (ML) in distributed heterogeneous computing environments, where computational resources of multiple edge compute nodes are utilized for collaborative learning for an underlying ML model. Distributed heterogeneous computing environments are computing environments where compute (processing) and storage resources are available at multiple edge compute nodes, with varying capabilities and operational constraints. Generally, an ML algorithm is a computer program that learns from experience with respect to some task and some performance measure, and an ML model may be any object or data structure created after an ML algorithm is trained with one or more training datasets. After training, an ML model may be used to make predictions on new datasets. Although the term “ML algorithm” refers to different concepts than the term “ML model,” these terms as discussed herein may be used interchangeably for the purposes of the present disclosure. 
     Gradient Descent (GD) algorithms and/or its variants are one critical component of many ML algorithms where training is performed on a large amount of data to estimate an underlying ML model. Linear regression is one such method that is used for many use cases including, for example, classification, stock market analysis, weather prediction, localization in wireless sensor networks (WSNs), and distributed path-planning for drones and automated driving applications. As a first step towards training ML algorithms in heterogeneous computing environments, embodiments provide distributed training via GD algorithm to estimate the underlying model for linear regression. Although the embodiments herein are discussed in terms of GD algorithms for linear regression, the distributed training embodiments discussed herein are applicable to more complex ML algorithms such as deep neural networks and the like. 
     One of the key challenges in GD algorithms is the computational cost incurred during the training phase. In typical GD implementations, an ML reference model is updated iteratively, where multiplication of large matrices and vectors needs to be computed in each epoch. Thus, computation time rapidly becomes a bottleneck as the model order grows. 
     In recent years, distributed computing has been used as a solution for reducing training time by parallelizing the GD computations to multiple compute nodes in a homogeneous computing environment, such as a server farm, data center, or cloud computing services. In homogeneous computing environments, compute nodes (e.g., individual servers) are dedicated to computing the gradients. In these solutions, during each epoch, each compute node computes a partial gradient. The partial gradients are typically obtained by summing up the gradients corresponding to the data points assigned to a compute node. Each compute node communicates their partial gradient back to a master node after the partial gradients are computed. The master node computes a full or complete gradient by combining all of the partial gradients received from all worker compute nodes. The master compute node updates the reference model, and then communicates the updated reference model to all worker compute node for the next epoch. 
     However, these homogeneous computing environments usually include compute nodes that have a same or similar platform configuration and/or computing speed, which allows the training data to be uniformly divided among the worker compute nodes. Additionally, the worker compute nodes and the master node communicate with one another over high data rate wired links with little to no uncertainty in link quality or throughput. Due to the compute node uniformity and little to no link uncertainty in homogeneous computing environments, these solutions cannot be straightforwardly applied to heterogeneous computing environments that include wireless links with variable and/or fluctuating data rates and link quality. This is because in these solutions, the training data is usually duplicated across all or most of the worker compute nodes. However, blindly duplicating training data across multiple compute nodes in a heterogeneous computing environment, without accounting for relative processing speeds, link quality, available battery life, and/or other operational parameters creates large redundancy overhead where, in many cases, an uncoded system may outperform coded solutions. 
     Recently, there have been some attempts to distribute GD computations across heterogeneous computing environments. Unlike homogenous computing environments, the compute nodes in heterogeneous computing environments are non-dedicated computing devices running multiple processes concurrently. Distributed GD is challenging in heterogeneous computing environments because the compute nodes have different computing capabilities and are also connected to a master node via respective wireless links that exhibit dynamic variations in link quality and achievable data rates. In heterogeneous computing environments, the compute nodes still need to compute their partial gradients and communicate those partial gradients to a master node. In current distributed GD solutions, the wait time for each epoch at the master node is dominated by the time needed to receive the partial gradients from compute nodes with relatively slow computational capabilities and/or with weak or low quality links. For example, the wait time at the master node for one or more training epochs may be prolonged by compute nodes with weak or low quality links, which may require multiple retransmissions to overcome radio link failures. Compute nodes from which the master node has to wait due to, for example, low quality links or slow processing capabilities, are typically known as “stragglers.” The issue of straggler nodes is especially relevant for computations that are distributed over wireless networks, where dynamic variations in wireless link quality can lead to loss of data. Accounting for such variations in distributed computing tasks is not well addressed by existing solutions. 
     In order to tackle straggler issues, some current solutions use repetition coding to duplicate data across different compute nodes. In these solutions, at each epoch, the master node needs to wait only for the first arriving unique set of partial gradients, which may reduce the delays from straggler nodes. However, in these solutions, there could be significant decoding complexity involved when aggregating the partial gradients at the master node, which leads to increased resource consumption and contributes to the full gradient computation delays. 
     The existing solutions described previously are either not applicable to heterogeneous computing environments and/or incur significant computational and signaling overhead when applies to heterogeneous computing environments. Furthermore, the existing solutions described previously also involve significant decoding complexity when aggregating partial gradients at the master node. The embodiments discussed herein make distributed gradient computing feasible for heterogeneous computing environments, by addressing the aforementioned issues and also addressing load balancing issues in distributing training data and computational tasks. 
     In order to utilize compute and storage resources of edge compute nodes, data needs to be communicated over an underlying communication network. With the emergence of ultra-dense wireless edge networks, it is increasingly likely that most data transmissions occur through wireless links. In order to minimize the overall training time, embodiments herein provide a data distribution policy that accounts for communication overhead associated with wireless data transmissions. 
     According to first embodiments, computing tasks of an underlying ML model are distributed to a plurality of edge compute nodes in a heterogeneous computing environment, where the plurality of edge compute nodes are connected to a wireless network via respective links with a master node, such as one or more application servers, one or more MEC servers, or some other suitable computing system. In one example, computational task of a GD algorithm are distributed to the plurality of edge compute nodes in the heterogeneous computing environment. In various embodiments, the master node exploits statistical knowledge of quality metrics related to communication links and processing delays (and/or processing capabilities of the edge compute nodes) when assigning ML tasks to individual edge compute nodes. In embodiments, random coding is used to encode the training data at an optimal (or near optimal) coding redundancy, and a load balancing policy is used to partition the computation load across the plurality of edge compute nodes. In embodiments, the master node obtains partial gradients computed by the plurality of edge compute nodes, and aggregates the partial gradients to obtain a full gradient with little to no decoding complexity. The computed full gradient is then sent back to the edge compute nodes to further refine the ML model until the ML model converges. These embodiments address heterogeneity in communication links and processing rates to enable distributed GD computation. These embodiments also provide minimal coding redundancy to minimize expected epoch time, which in turn reduces the total training time. These embodiments also outperform uncoded systems in heterogeneous computing environments, while providing little to no decoding complexity to aggregate partial gradients. Other embodiments may be described and/or claimed. 
     In these embodiments, a multi-access edge computing (MEC) framework may be used to implement collaborative learning for an underlying ML model. Application computation offloading is one of the use cases enabled by MEC technology. MEC is a network architecture that allows cloud computing capabilities and computing services to be performed at the edge of a cellular network. MEC provides mechanisms that allow applications to be run and to perform related processing tasks closer to network subscribers (also referred to as “edge users” or “edge nodes” and the like). In this way, network congestion may be reduced and applications may have better performance. MEC technology is designed to be implemented at the cellular base stations, and may enable flexible and rapid deployment of new applications and services for subscribers. Combining elements of information technology and telecommunications networking, MEC also allows cellular operators to open their radio access network (RAN) to authorized third-parties, such as application developers and content providers. In these embodiments, a MEC system offloads one or more computations or tasks for developing an ML model to various edge compute nodes during a training process. For example, a MEC system can offload training data for partial gradient computations to individual edge compute nodes. Additionally, in these embodiments, the central parameter system discussed previously may be a MEC system, and may include a MEC platform (MEP) manager, a selected MEC host, or some other suitable element of a MEC system. Other embodiments may be described and/or claimed. 
     According to second embodiments, rather than distributing data to individual edge compute nodes, the central parameter system may instruct individual edge compute nodes to perform ML training tasks using data already located at the edge compute nodes. In addition to the issues discussed previously for distributed ML in heterogeneous computing environments, user privacy becomes a major issue when implementing distributed ML training processes using data available at different edge compute nodes. Ensuring user privacy protections for users who collaborate in distributed ML model computations since some of these users may want to keep their raw data secure on their device. Failure to account for privacy concerns may result in underutilization of the processing capabilities of edge networks, including MEC networks, since some users may not opt-in to allowing their data to be used for collaborative unless these concerns can be alleviated. 
     A conventional strategy to carry out processing of data provided by edge compute nodes includes requiring each edge compute node to upload their entire dataset to a computing service, then utilizing dedicated servers to carry out the GD computations. Therefore, the issues discussed above are relevant to this conventional strategy. Furthermore, uploading client data to a computing service may become prohibitive due to communication cost as well as privacy concerns. 
     Another approach for decentralized distributed GD involves using gossip algorithms (or gossip protocols). In this approach, the compute nodes are connected to each other via a communication network, and each compute node updates its local model using its own data and using model updates obtained from neighbor compute nodes. This approach leads to relatively slow convergence since making update rules for gossip algorithms is difficult. Further, gossip protocol solutions lead to poor quality of models learnt by individual compute nodes since they do not take into account all updated generated by all compute nodes. 
     Recently, federated learning has been proposed for distributed GD computation, where learning takes place by a federation of client compute nodes that are coordinated by a central server. Each client compute node fetches a global model, updates the global model using its local data, and communicates the updated model to the central server. Thereafter, the central server selects a random set of client compute nodes in each epoch to provide additional updates and waits for the selected client compute nodes to return their updated models. The central server averages the received models to obtain the final global model. Federated learning is more efficient than asynchronous update methods as it avoids the prohibitive number of model updates both at the central server and worker compute nodes. By random selection of workers in each epoch, they offer speedups compared to full batch GD methods. However, federated learning based on random polling can become relatively slow since federated learning does not consider operational conditions of client compute nodes as discussed previously. 
     In sum, the existing approaches to distributed ML learning do not consider heterogeneity in processing capabilities, communication rates, channel quality, available battery life, and/or other operational parameters when allocating computations to individual compute nodes. The failure to account for different operational parameters when allocating computational tasks and/or for updating corresponding models causes bottlenecks in the overall execution of the ML training process. Furthermore, coded computing mechanisms have not been developed for distributed ML or GD workloads. 
     The disclosed embodiments enable coding on distributed datasets while ensuring user privacy of training data provided by each edge compute node. Embodiments herein provide coding mechanisms for federated learning based GD algorithms trained from decentralized data available at a plurality of edge compute nodes. 
     In the second embodiments, the individual edge compute nodes encode locally available data for ML training. At each epoch, the edge compute nodes locally compute partial gradients from local uncoded training data. The master node estimates or otherwise determines a size of a subset of the local data that individual edge compute nodes should process during the ML training process. The estimated or determined subset size is based on the operational parameters of the individual edge compute nodes. In some embodiments, random (en)coding is performed by each edge compute node to disjointly encode the training data at optimal or near-optimal coding redundancy. In some embodiments, the subset of the local data and/or the (en)coded training data at each edge compute node is weighted based on operational parameters, such as expected computing delay, signal quality for communicating raw data, computing (processing) power and/or budget, and/or other operational parameters, which allows the master node to combat the straggler effect. 
     The encoded data is uploaded or otherwise provided to the master node for partial gradient computation. In these embodiments, only corresponding partial gradients are shared with the master node; the edge compute nodes do not share their (en)coding coefficients (or keys) with each other or with the master node. Partial gradient computations are performed by the master node on the provided encoded data points, while a majority of gradient computation is done privately by each edge compute node on its local uncoded data points. In each epoch, partial gradients received from the edge compute nodes and partial gradients computed from (en)coded training data available at the master node are aggregated or combined such that little to no decoding complexity is incurred. The master node combines the partial gradients obtained from the encoded data points with the partial gradients obtained from the uncoded data points iteratively until the underlying ML model converges. Other embodiments may be described and/or claimed. 
     Similar to the previously described embodiments, the computations are balanced across the plurality of edge compute nodes based on statistical knowledge of various operational parameters including, but not limited to, link quality, processing speed, and battery life. Like the first embodiments discussed previously, these privacy based embodiments may also be implemented using a MEC framework, where the master node is a MEC system, including one or more MEC (or MEC hosts) or some other suitable MEC element/entity. In these embodiments, the MEC system (or one or more MEC servers/hosts designated as the master node) offloads ML computations to one or more MEC servers/hosts, while using coding to preserve privacy and improve reliability. The embodiments discussed herein exploit heterogeneity and stochastic behavior of computing and communication in heterogeneous computing environments to allocate optimal or near-optimal gradient computation tasks to edge compute nodes. Additionally, disjointed encoding of training data at each edge compute node, with the sharing of only (en)coded training data to the master node ensures data protection and alleviates privacy concerns. These embodiments also outperform uncoded systems in heterogeneous computing environments without incurring decoding complexity. Simulation results have shown that these embodiments reduce training time is reduced by approximately 50% when compared to uncoded federate learning mechanisms, and while ensuring data privacy is fully preserved. Other embodiments may be described and/or claimed. 
     1. Machine Learning in Distributed Heterogeneous Environments 
     Referring now to  FIG. 1 , where an example heterogeneous computing environment  100  in accordance with various embodiments, is shown. Environment  100  may be referred to as a heterogeneous environment because collaborating nodes have disparate operational parameters, including different device/system capabilities and different operational contexts and/or constraints. For example, environment  100  includes a plurality of heterogeneous compute nodes  101 ,  201  some of which may have different compute node capabilities and some of which operate under different operational contexts and/or constraints. The heterogeneous compute nodes  101 ,  201  (also referred to as “edge compute nodes  101 ,  201 ” or the like) includes user equipment (UEs)  101  (e.g., including UE  101   a , UE  101   b , UE  101   c , and UEs  101   x ) and one or more multi-access edge computing (MEC) hosts  201  (sometimes referred to as MEC servers  201 ). 
     In environment  100 , a MEC system  200  may execute machine learning (ML) functionalities, namely training process (model) β, and distributes different computational tasks β 1 , β 2 , β 3 , β d-1 , and β d  (where d is a number) of the training process (model) β to different heterogeneous compute nodes, including UE  101   a , UE  101   b , and UE  101   c , and MEC server  201   a  and MEC server  201   c . The MEC system  200  includes a collection of MEC servers  201  (including MEC server  201   a , MEC server  201   b , and MEC server  201   c  in  FIG. 1 ) and MEC management systems (not shown by  FIG. 1 ) necessary to run MEC applications (e.g., MEAs  636  of  FIGS. 6-7  and MEAs  836  of  FIG. 8 ) within an operator network or a subset of an operator network. The MEC servers  201   a ,  200   b ,  200   c  (collectively referred to as “MEC servers  201 ” or “MEC server  201 ”) are physical computer systems (e.g., server compute nodes) that include a MEC platform (e.g., MEP  637  of  FIGS. 6-7  and MEP-VNF  837  of  FIG. 8 ) and a virtualization infrastructure (e.g., VI  638  of  FIG. 7  and/or NFVI  804  of  FIG. 8 ), and provide compute, storage, and network resources to MEC applications. The MEC servers  201  may also be referred to as “MEC hosts  201 ” or “edge servers.” The virtualization infrastructure (VI) of the MEC servers  201  provide virtualized environments and virtualized resources (e.g., “virtualized infrastructure”) for the MEC hosts  201 , and the MEC applications may run as virtual machines (VMs) and/or application containers on top of the VI. The components and/or entities of the MEC system  200  are discussed in more detail infra with respect to  FIGS. 6-8 . 
     For edge-cloud ML or distributed learning, ML training is performed on a dataset to learn parameters of an underlying model β, where the dataset and computational tasks of the ML training process are distributed across a plurality of edge nodes  101 ,  201 . In various embodiments, one or more MEC servers  201  execute computationally intensive tasks of an unknown model β (also referred to as a “training process”) since the MEC servers  201  may have higher performance capabilities as compared to UEs  101 . In the example of  FIG. 1 , MEC server  201   b  has been selected to execute computationally intensive tasks of the unknown model β, while less computationally intensive functionalities, namely tasks β 1 , β 2 , β 3 , β d-1 , and β d , are executed by edge compute nodes  101 ,  201 . Additionally, the edge nodes  101 ,  201  may require training datasets x 1 , x 2 , x 3 , x m-1 , and x m  (where m is a number) to perform respective tasks β 1 , β 2 , β 3 , β d-1 , and β d . The training datasets x 1 , x 2 , x 3 , x m-1 , and x m  are subsets of a full training dataset X (i.e., where X equals a combination of training datasets x 1 , x 2 , x 3 , x m-1 , and x m ), and the computational tasks β 1 , β 2 , β 3 , β d-1 , and β d  are subsets of the unknown model β for the underlying ML model/algorithm. As discussed in more detail infra, the training datasets x 1 , x 2 , x 3 , x m-1 , and x m  may be provided to the edge nodes  101 ,  201  by the MEC servers  201 , or may be user data already stored by, or otherwise accessible by the edge nodes  101 ,  201 . By off-loading ML training tasks to individual edge nodes  101 ,  201 , the ML training process may be accelerated and/or may provide a more efficient use of computational resources. 
     In embodiments, a new instance of training process (model) β may be started on an appropriate MEC server  201  (e.g., MEC server  201   b  in the example of  FIG. 1 ) in response to a request from a user (e.g., a UE  101 , owner/operator of a service provider system including server(s)  130 , etc.). In response to requests from various users, connectivity may be established between edge nodes  101 ,  201  and the instance of the already running training process (model) β. The training process (model) β may have a set of requirements (e.g., latency, processing resources, storage resources, network resources, location, network capability, security conditions, etc.) that need to be fulfilled by individual edge nodes  101 ,  201 , and the MEC system  200  may select one or more MEC servers  201  (e.g., MEC server  201   b  in the example of  FIG. 1 ) that fulfills all of the requirements, and the selected MEC server(s)  201  may select individual edge nodes  101 ,  201  to perform particular tasks β 1 -β d  on a specific dataset x 1 -x m . When all selected edge nodes  101 ,  201  that were connected to a specific instance of the training process (model) P have disconnected, the instance of the training process (model) β may be terminated. 
     As mentioned previously, computing tasks β 1 -β d  of the underlying ML model β are distributed to the plurality of edge compute nodes  101 ,  201  in heterogeneous computing environment  100 . where the plurality of edge compute nodes  101 ,  201  are connected to a wireless network via respective links  103 ,  105 ,  107  to the MEC system  200 . As an example, the underlying ML model is a gradient descent (GD) algorithm and each of the computing tasks β 1 -β d  distributed to the plurality of edge compute nodes  101 ,  201  are related to computing respective partial gradients. In various embodiments, the MEC system  200  (or selected MEC server  201   b  in the example of  FIG. 1 ) exploits statistical knowledge of operational parameters of each edge compute node  101 ,  201  when assigning ML tasks to each of the edge compute nodes  101 ,  201 . In embodiments, the MEC system  200  may consult a load balancing policy (or multiple load balancing policies) to partition the computational load across the plurality of edge compute nodes  101 ,  201 , and calculate a coding redundancy for encoding the training datasets x 1 -x m  for each edge node  101 ,  201 . The load balancing policy may define one or more actions and the conditions under which the actions are executed. In these embodiments, the load balancing policy may include, for example, algorithms, weight factors for individual pieces of data, analysis techniques/functions, system rules, policy definitions, ML models to be solved or otherwise obtained, ML algorithms to use to obtain the ML models, etc. In some embodiments, the load balancing policy may include executable code, which can include software modules or computational logic which, when operated by the MEC system  200 , executes various load balancing calculations based on the operational parameters of the edge nodes  101 ,  201 , and partitions the training data X into the training datasets x 1 -x m  for respective edge nodes  101 ,  201  based on the load balancing calculations. As an example, the load balancing policy may define the particular type or types of operational parameters (discussed infra) that should be collected by the MEC system  200 . In another example, the load balancing policy may define criteria to be used by the MEC system  200  for determining threshold criteria or a desired level of reliability for selecting a particular edge compute node  101 ,  201  to perform computational tasks β. In this example, the threshold criteria may be based on a desired epoch time for computing a full gradient from obtained partial gradients from each edge compute node  101 ,  201 . In another example, the load balancing policy may define criteria (e.g., load allocation criteria) to be used by the MEC system  200  for determining how to partition the training data into different datasets x 1 -x m . 
     Different load balancing policies or configurations may be used by the MEC system  200  to select offloading targets and/or partition mechanisms based on the operational parameters. The policies/configurations may emphasize or prioritize different operational parameters and/or for different ML training applications. For example, the load balancing policy may indicate to select edge compute nodes  101 ,  201  based on latency budget minimization (e.g., selecting based on latency performance over computational capabilities/constraints and/or energy consumption); based on computation minimization (e.g., selecting based on computational capabilities/constraints over latency performance); based on a latency budget threshold; based on a computational capability/constraint budget; based on an energy consumption threshold; minimizing computational load while being within a latency threshold; minimizing latency while being within a computational load threshold; minimizing energy consumption while being within a latency threshold and/or a computational load threshold; minimizing latency while being within an energy consumption threshold and/or a computational load threshold; and/or the like. In some embodiments, a selection of edge compute nodes  101 ,  201  may be compiled into a shortlist of target nodes based on a first set of operational parameters, and a subset of the target nodes may be selected from the shortlist based on a second set of operational parameters. For example, a shortlist of candidate edge compute nodes  101 ,  201  having a threshold link quality measurement could be compiled, and a set of the candidate edge compute nodes  101 ,  201  having a best computational performance among the candidates may be selected from the shortlist as the optimum offloading candidate edge compute nodes  101 ,  201 . In some embodiments, a suitable weighting algorithm may be used to emphasize some operational parameters over other operational parameters. Other weighting, ranking, prioritization, and selection mechanisms or methods may be used in various embodiments. 
     In some embodiments, the load balancing policy may indicate a load allocation criterion, which is used to partition the encoded training data. The load allocation criterion may be based on a desired computation time (e.g., a maximum amount of time) for computing the partial gradients. In one example, the load allocation criterion may be, or may be based on, a minimax criterion, which maximizes the number of partial gradients received from each edge compute node  101 ,  201  for a minimum epoch time. 
     The operational parameters of the edge compute nodes  101 ,  201  includes compute node capabilities and operational constraints or contexts. The compute node capabilities may include, for example, configuration information (e.g., a hardware platform make and model, hardware component types and arrangement within the hardware platform, associated peripheral and/or attached devices/systems, processor architecture, currently running operating systems and/or applications and/or their requirements, subscription data (e.g., data plan and permissions for network access), security levels or permissions (e.g., possible authentication and/or authorization required to access the edge compute node  101 ,  201 ), etc.); computational capacity (e.g., a total processor speed of one or more processors, a total number of VMs capable of being operated by the edge compute node  101 ,  201 , a memory or storage size, an average computation time per workload, a reuse degree of computational resources, etc.); current or predicted computational load and/or computational resources (e.g., processor utilization or occupied processor resources, memory or storage utilization, etc.); current or predicted unoccupied computational resources (e.g., available or unused memory and/or processor resources, available VMs, etc.); network capabilities (e.g., link adaptation capabilities, configured and/or maximum transmit power, achievable data rate per channel usage, antenna configurations, supported radio technologies or functionalities of a device (e.g., whether a UE  101  supports Bluetooth/BLE; whether an (R)AN node  111  supports LTE-WLAN aggregation (LWA) and/or LTE/WLAN Radio Level Integration with IPsec Tunnel (LWIP), etc.), subscription information of particular UEs  101 , etc.); energy budget (e.g., battery power budget); and/or other like capabilities. 
     The operational contexts and/or constraints may be any type of information about how a particular compute node is operating and/or the conditions under which the compute node is operating. The operational contexts and/or constraints include, for example, channel state conditions and/or quality of fronthaul links  103 ,  105 , and/or  107 , and state conditions and/or quality of backhaul links/interfaces  112 ,  114 ,  115 ,  125 ; overload conditions experienced by UEs  101  and/or (R)AN nodes  111  and  106 ; application parameters such as computational needs, input/output characteristics, and volume of exchanged data with an edge server, or the like; conditions of individual hardware components (e.g., temperature, load, utilization, current or predicted available power, energy consumption measurements, etc.); environmental information of an environment surrounding a compute node (e.g., temperature, ambient light, sound/volume, altitude, humidity, moisture, information/data related to geographic objects (e.g., mountains) and/or human-created objects (e.g., buildings, highways, etc.), weather data for a given location, the geolocation or other positioning information, and/or other like environmental measurements); OS and/or application parameters and requirements; and/or other like contextual information. In some embodiments, the operational contexts and/or constraints may be based on a pre-assessment of an operational state of the edge compute nodes  101 ,  102 , which may be based on previously indicated operational contexts and/or constraints for different offloading opportunities. This may involve, for example, evaluating both computation and communication resources needed for different offloading opportunities. The threshold criteria or a desired level of reliability mentioned previously may be based on a certain amount or type of compute node capabilities (e.g., a certain processor speed) and/or a type of operational constraints under which the compute node is operating (e.g., a desired link quality, a desired surrounding temperature, a desired processor temperature, etc.). 
     The fronthaul and/or backhaul link conditions may include network performance information related to network traffic measurements (e.g., measurements of the amount and type of traffic flowing through or across one or more network nodes), as well as various performance measurements. The performance measurements may include information/data related to bandwidth, channel/link throughput and/or data rate, latency, jitter, error rate, a number of active UEs  101  and/or user sessions, packet delay, call and/or connection drops, loss rate, data volume measurements, round trip times (RTTs) and/or round-trip delay times (RTDs), QoS parameters, etc. The fronthaul link conditions may include the aforementioned traffic and performance measurements, as well as information/data related to signal strength measurements (e.g., reference signal received power (RSRP), received signal strength indicator (RSSI), etc.), signal quality measurements (e.g., reference signal received quality (RSRQ), energy per bit to noise power spectral density ratio (Eb/No), signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR), etc.), channel state information (CSI), channel or network access information (e.g., a number of radio resource control (RRC) connection/setup/reconfiguration attempts, a number of random access and/or random access channel (RACH) attempts, a number of radio link failures (RLFs), a number of handovers (HOs)/HO attempts/HO failures, etc.), and/or the like. 
     Any of the aforementioned operational parameters may be measured or otherwise determined stochasticly or deterministicly. The stochastic operational parameters (or stochastic components of the operational parameters) may be randomly determined or measured, or may have a random probability distribution or pattern that is analyzed statistically but may not be predicted precisely. The deterministic operational parameters (or deterministic components of the operational parameters) may be measurements or information produced without randomness. In other words, the deterministic operational parameters when measured or determined are likely to produce the same outcome given a particular situation and/or context. 
     As mentioned previously, in a first embodiment, the MEC system  200  distributes encoded training datasets x 1 -x m  to individual edge compute nodes  101 ,  201 , and calculates a full gradient from the partial gradients computed by the edge compute nodes  101 ,  201  using the encoded training datasets x 1 -x m . In some such embodiments, the MEC system  200  may provide or indicate an identifier of remote resource(s) and/or remote memory/storage location(s) where the training datasets x 1 -x m  and/or respective computational tasks β 1 -β d  can be located and accessed. In various embodiments, the MEC system  200  determines a coding redundancy to encode the training datasets x 1 -x m . A redundancy is coded into the training datasets to avoid wait time and bottleneck issues due to straggler nodes as discussed previously. The MEC system  200  determines the coding redundancy based on the operational parameters of each edge compute node  101 ,  201 , which is used to encode the respective training datasets x 1 -x m . In some embodiments, the coding redundancy is a function of the number of data points in the full training dataset X. In an example where the full training dataset X includes one thousand ( 1000 ) data points to be distributed among ten (10) edge compute nodes  101 ,  201 , a redundancy for encoding the training dataset X may be determined to be eleven hundred (1100) data points based, for example, on the load balancing policy discussed previously. In this example, the coding redundancy is one hundred (100) additional data points, and each of the ten edge compute nodes  101 ,  201  may receive a training dataset x i  with a portion of the additional one hundred (100) data points of the coding redundancy. Continuing with this example, if the training dataset X is to be equally divided among the ten edge compute nodes  101 ,  201 , then the training dataset x i  for each of the ten edge compute nodes  101 ,  201  may be encoded to include one hundred ten (110) data points. By encoding a redundancy into the training datasets for each edge compute node  101 ,  201 , the MEC system  200  does not have to wait for each partial gradient to be obtained from each of the ten edge compute nodes  101 ,  201  to compute the full gradient. Instead, the MEC system  200  only has to wait computations performed on one thousand data points of the distributed training datasets. In this way, the MEC system  200  can avoid the wait time and bottleneck issues due to straggler compute nodes as discussed previously. 
     According to second embodiments, rather than distributing training datasets x 1 -x m  to individual edge compute nodes  101 ,  201 , the training datasets x 1 -x m  may be locally available or accessible at each of the edge compute nodes  101 ,  201 , and the MEC system  200  instructs the edge compute nodes  101 ,  201  to perform training tasks β 1 -β d  using the locally available/accessible training datasets x 1 -x m . The locally available/accessible datasets x 1 -x m  may be stored in local storage/memory circuitry of the edge compute nodes  101 ,  201 ; may be accessed via a direct link  105  from a remote sensor, IoT UE(s)  101   x , or some other UE  101 ; and/or may be accessed from a remote storage system (e.g., cloud storage or via a platform provided by server(s)  130 ). As an example with reference to  FIG. 1 , the datasets x 1  and x 2  may be stored in local memory of UEs  101   a  and  101   b , respectively, while the dataset x 3  may be accessed by UE  101   c  from individual UEs  101   x  over direct links  105 . In this example, the dataset x 3  may include sensor data captured by IoT UEs  101   x.    
     In these embodiments, the MEC system  200  determines a size of a subset of the local training datasets x 1 -x m  that the individual edge compute nodes  101 ,  201  should process, the particular tasks β 1 -β d  to be used to process the local training datasets x 1 -x m , and the coding redundancy to be used to encode the locally available data. In some such embodiments, the MEC system  200  may provide or indicate an identifier or remote resource(s) and/or remote memory/storage location(s) where the aforementioned information can be located and accessed. In various embodiments, the size of the local training datasets x 1 -x m  to be processed and/or the coding redundancy is based on the operational parameters of the individual edge compute nodes  101 ,  201 . In some embodiments, the size of the local training datasets x 1 -x m  at each edge compute node  101 ,  201  is weighted based on operational parameters. The coding redundancy and the weights are used to reduce wait times and bottlenecks due to straggler nodes. In these embodiments, the individual edge compute nodes  101 ,  201  encode their locally available training datasets x 1 -x m  according to the coding redundancy indicated by the MEC system  200 . At each epoch, the edge compute nodes  101 ,  201  locally perform tasks β 1 -β d  to compute partial gradients on local uncoded training datasets x 1 -x m . These and other aspects of the embodiments are discussed in more detail infra with respect to  FIG. 2-5 . 
     Referring back to  FIG. 1 , the environment  100  is shown to include a user equipment (UE)  101   a , UE  101   b , UE  101   c , and individual UEs  101   x  (collectively referred to as “UE  101 ” or “UEs  101 ”). The UEs  101  may also be referred to as “edge devices,” “compute nodes,” “edge compute nodes,” and/or the like. In this example, the UE  101   a  is illustrated as a smartphone, UE  101   b  is illustrated as a tablet computer (e.g., handheld touchscreen mobile computing device connectable to one or more cellular networks), and UE  101   c  is illustrated as a laptop computer. However, these UEs  101  may comprise any mobile or non-mobile computing device, such as Personal Data Assistants (PDAs), pagers, desktop computers, wireless handsets, vehicle-embedded systems or a vehicle-to-everything (V2X) devices, or any type of computing device including a wireless communications interface. 
     Environment  100  also includes IoT UEs  101   x , which are uniquely identifiable embedded computing devices (e.g., within the Internet infrastructure) that comprise a network access layer designed for low-power IoT applications utilizing short-lived UE connections. An IoT UE  101   x  can utilize technologies such as M2M or MTC for exchanging data with an MTC server (e.g., a server  130 ), a MEC server  201  and/or MEC system, or device via a PLMN, ProSe or D2D communication, sensor networks, or IoT networks. The M2M or MTC exchange of data may be a machine-initiated exchange of data. An IoT network describes an interconnecting IoT UEs  102 , such as the IoT UEs  102  in  FIG. 1  being connected to one another over respective direct links  105 . The IoT UEs  102  may execute background applications (e.g., keep-alive messages, status updates, etc.) to facilitate the connections of the IoT network. Where the IoT devices  102  are, or are embedded in, sensor devices, the IoT network may be a wireless sensor network (WSN). 
     The UEs  101  may be configured to connect, for example, communicatively couple, with RAN  110 . In embodiments, the RAN  110  may be an NG RAN or a 5G RAN, an E-UTRAN, or a legacy RAN, such as a UTRAN or GERAN. As used herein, the term “NG RAN” or the like may refer to a RAN  110  that operates in an NR or 5G system  100 , and the term “E-UTRAN” or the like may refer to a RAN  110  that operates in an LTE or 4G system  100 . The UEs  101  utilize respective connections (or channels)  103 , respectively, each of which comprises a physical communications interface or layer. In this example, the connections  103  are illustrated as an air interface to enable communicative coupling, and can be consistent with cellular communications protocols, such as a GSM protocol, a CDMA network protocol, a PTT protocol, a POC protocol, a UMTS protocol, a 3GPP LTE protocol, a 5G protocol, a NR protocol, and/or any of the other communications protocols discussed herein. In embodiments, the UEs  101  may directly exchange communication data via a ProSe interface  105 . The ProSe interface  105  may alternatively be referred to as a SL interface  105  and may comprise one or more logical channels, including but not limited to a PSCCH, a PSSCH, a PSDCH, and a PSBCH. 
     In embodiments, the UEs  101  may further directly exchange communication data via respective direct interfaces  105 . In some implementations the interface  105  may be a WiFi based link or a personal area network (PAN) based link (e.g., IEEE 802.15.4 based protocols including ZigBee, IPv6 over Low power Wireless Personal Area Networks (6LoWPAN), WirelessHART, MiWi, Thread, etc.; WiFi-direct; Bluetooth/Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) protocols). In other implementations, the interface  105  may be an LTE Proximity Services (ProSe) link. The ProSe interface  105  may alternatively be referred to as a sidelink interface, and may comprise one or more logical channels, including but not limited to a Physical Sidelink Control Channel (PSCCH), a Physical Sidelink Shared Channel (PSSCH), a Physical Sidelink Discovery Channel (PSDCH), and a Physical Sidelink Broadcast Channel (PSBCH). In various implementations, the SL interface  105  may be used in vehicular applications and communications technologies, which are often referred to as V2X systems. V2X is a mode of communication where UEs (for example, UEs  101 ) communicate with each other directly over the PC5/SL interface  105  and can take place when the UEs  101  are served by Access Nodes (ANs)  111  or when one or more UEs are outside a coverage area of a RAN. V2X may be classified into four different types: vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I), vehicle-to-network (V2N), and vehicle-to-pedestrian (V2P). These V2X applications can use “co-operative awareness” to provide more intelligent services for end-users. For example, UEs  101 , (R)AN nodes  111 , application servers  130 , and pedestrian UEs  101 , may collect knowledge of their local environment (for example, information received from other vehicles or sensor equipment in proximity) to process and share that knowledge in order to provide more intelligent services, such as cooperative collision warning, autonomous driving, and the like. In these implementations, the UEs  101  may be implemented/employed as Vehicle Embedded Communications Systems (VECS) or the like. 
     The UEs  101   b  and  101   c  are shown to be configured to access an access point (AP)  106  via respective connections  107 . The connections  107  can comprise a local wireless connection, such as a connection consistent with any IEEE 802.11 protocol, wherein the AP  106  would comprise a wireless fidelity (WiFi®) router. In this example, the AP  106  is shown to be connected to the Internet without connecting to the core network  120  of the wireless system. In various embodiments, the UE  101   b , RAN  110 , and AP  106  may be configured to utilize LWA operation and/or LWIP operation. The LWA operation may involve the UE  101   b  in RRC_CONNECTED being configured by a RAN nodes  111   a - b  to utilize radio resources of LTE and WLAN. LWIP operation may involve the UE  101   b  using WLAN radio resources (e.g., connection  107 ) via IPsec protocol tunneling to authenticate and encrypt packets (e.g., IP packets) sent over the connection  107 . IPsec tunneling includes encapsulating the entirety of original IP packets and adding a new packet header, thereby protecting the original header of the IP packets. 
     The RAN  110  can include one or more AN nodes or RAN nodes  111   a  and  111   b  (collectively referred to as “RAN nodes  111 ” or “RAN node  111 ”) that enable the connections  103  and  104 . As used herein, the terms “access node,” “access point,” or the like may describe equipment that provides the radio baseband functions for data and/or voice connectivity between a network and one or more users. These access nodes can be referred to as BS, gNBs, RAN nodes, eNBs, NodeBs, RSUs, TRxPs or TRPs, and so forth, and can comprise ground stations (e.g., terrestrial access points) or satellite stations providing coverage within a geographic area (e.g., a cell). As used herein, the term “NG RAN node” or the like may refer to a RAN node  111  that operates in an NR or 5G system  100  (for example, a gNB), and the term “E-UTRAN node” or the like may refer to a RAN node  111  that operates in an LTE or 4G system  100  (e.g., an eNB). According to various embodiments, the RAN nodes  111  may be implemented as one or more of a dedicated physical device such as a macrocell base station, and/or a low power (LP) base station for providing femtocells, picocells or other like cells having smaller coverage areas, smaller user capacity, or higher bandwidth compared to macrocells. 
     In some embodiments, all or parts of the RAN nodes  111  may be implemented as one or more software entities running on server computers as part of a virtual network, which may be referred to as a CRAN and/or a virtual baseband unit pool (vBBUP). In these embodiments, the CRAN or vBBUP may implement a RAN function split, such as a PDCP split wherein RRC and PDCP layers are operated by the CRAN/vBBUP and other L2 protocol entities are operated by individual RAN nodes  111 ; a MAC/PHY split wherein RRC, PDCP, RLC, and MAC layers are operated by the CRAN/vBBUP and the PHY layer is operated by individual RAN nodes  111 ; or a “lower PHY” split wherein RRC, PDCP, RLC, MAC layers and upper portions of the PHY layer are operated by the CRAN/vBBUP and lower portions of the PHY layer are operated by individual RAN nodes  111 . This virtualized framework allows the freed-up processor cores of the RAN nodes  111  to perform other virtualized applications. In some implementations, an individual RAN node  111  may represent individual gNB-DUs that are connected to a gNB-CU via individual F1 interfaces (not shown by  FIG. 1 ). In these implementations, the gNB-DUs include one or more remote radio heads or RFEMs (see, e.g.,  FIG. 9 ), and the gNB-CU may be operated by a server that is located in the RAN  110  (not shown) or by a server pool in a similar manner as the CRAN/vBBUP. Additionally or alternatively, one or more of the RAN nodes  111  may be next generation eNBs (ng-eNBs), which are RAN nodes that provide E-UTRA user plane and control plane protocol terminations toward the UEs  101 , and are connected to a 5GC (e.g., CN XR 220  of  Figure XR2 ) via an NG interface (discussed infra). 
     In V2X scenarios one or more of the RAN nodes  111  may be or act as RSUs. The term “Road Side Unit” or “RSU” may refer to any transportation infrastructure entity used for V2X communications. An RSU may be implemented in or by a suitable RAN node or a stationary (or relatively stationary) UE, where an RSU implemented in or by a UE may be referred to as a “UE-type RSU,” an RSU implemented in or by an eNB may be referred to as an “eNB-type RSU,” an RSU implemented in or by a gNB may be referred to as a “gNB-type RSU,” and the like. In one example, an RSU is a computing device coupled with radio frequency circuitry located on a roadside that provides connectivity support to passing vehicle UEs  101  (vUEs  101 ). The RSU may also include internal data storage circuitry to store intersection map geometry, traffic statistics, media, as well as applications/software to sense and control ongoing vehicular and pedestrian traffic. The RSU may operate on the 5.9 GHz Direct Short Range Communications (DSRC) band to provide very low latency communications required for high speed events, such as crash avoidance, traffic warnings, and the like. Additionally or alternatively, the RSU may operate on the cellular V2X band to provide the aforementioned low latency communications, as well as other cellular communications services. Additionally or alternatively, the RSU may operate as a Wi-Fi hotspot (2.4 GHz band) and/or provide connectivity to one or more cellular networks to provide uplink and downlink communications. The computing device(s) and some or all of the radiofrequency circuitry of the RSU may be packaged in a weatherproof enclosure suitable for outdoor installation, and may include a network interface controller to provide a wired connection (e.g., Ethernet) to a traffic signal controller and/or a backhaul network. 
     Any of the RAN nodes  111  can terminate the air interface protocol and can be the first point of contact for the UEs  101 . In some embodiments, any of the RAN nodes  111  can fulfill various logical functions for the RAN  110  including, but not limited to, radio network controller (RNC) functions such as radio bearer management, uplink and downlink dynamic radio resource management and data packet scheduling, and mobility management. 
     In embodiments, the UEs  101  can be configured to communicate using OFDM communication signals with each other or with any of the RAN nodes  111  over a multicarrier communication channel in accordance with various communication techniques, such as, but not limited to, an OFDMA communication technique (e.g., for downlink communications) or a SC-FDMA communication technique (e.g., for uplink and ProSe or sidelink communications), although the scope of the embodiments is not limited in this respect. The OFDM signals can comprise a plurality of orthogonal subcarriers. 
     In some embodiments, a downlink resource grid can be used for downlink transmissions from any of the RAN nodes  111  to the UEs  101 , while uplink transmissions can utilize similar techniques. The grid can be a time-frequency grid, called a resource grid or time-frequency resource grid, which is the physical resource in the downlink in each slot. Such a time-frequency plane representation is a common practice for OFDM systems, which makes it intuitive for radio resource allocation. Each column and each row of the resource grid corresponds to one OFDM symbol and one OFDM subcarrier, respectively. The duration of the resource grid in the time domain corresponds to one slot in a radio frame. The smallest time-frequency unit in a resource grid is denoted as a resource element. Each resource grid comprises a number of resource blocks, which describe the mapping of certain physical channels to resource elements. Each resource block comprises a collection of resource elements; in the frequency domain, this may represent the smallest quantity of resources that currently can be allocated. There are several different physical downlink channels that are conveyed using such resource blocks. 
     According to various embodiments, the UEs  101  and the RAN nodes  111  communicate data (for example, transmit and receive) data over a licensed medium (also referred to as the “licensed spectrum” and/or the “licensed band”) and an unlicensed shared medium (also referred to as the “unlicensed spectrum” and/or the “unlicensed band”). The licensed spectrum may include channels that operate in the frequency range of approximately 400 MHz to approximately 3.8 GHz, whereas the unlicensed spectrum may include the 5 GHz band. 
     To operate in the unlicensed spectrum, the UEs  101  and the RAN nodes  111  may operate using LAA, eLAA, and/or feLAA mechanisms. In these implementations, the UEs  101  and the RAN nodes  111  may perform one or more known medium-sensing operations and/or carrier-sensing operations in order to determine whether one or more channels in the unlicensed spectrum is unavailable or otherwise occupied prior to transmitting in the unlicensed spectrum. The medium/carrier sensing operations may be performed according to a listen-before-talk (LBT) protocol. 
     LBT is a mechanism whereby equipment (for example, UEs  101 , RAN nodes  111 , etc.) senses a medium (for example, a channel or carrier frequency) and transmits when the medium is sensed to be idle (or when a specific channel in the medium is sensed to be unoccupied). The medium sensing operation may include CCA, which utilizes at least ED to determine the presence or absence of other signals on a channel in order to determine if a channel is occupied or clear. This LBT mechanism allows cellular/LAA networks to coexist with incumbent systems in the unlicensed spectrum and with other LAA networks. ED may include sensing RF energy across an intended transmission band for a period of time and comparing the sensed RF energy to a predefined or configured threshold. 
     Typically, the incumbent systems in the 5 GHz band are WLANs based on IEEE 802.11 technologies. WLAN employs a contention-based channel access mechanism, called CSMA/CA. Here, when a WLAN node (e.g., a mobile station (MS) such as UEs  101 , AP  106 , or the like) intends to transmit, the WLAN node may first perform CCA before transmission. Additionally, a backoff mechanism is used to avoid collisions in situations where more than one WLAN node senses the channel as idle and transmits at the same time. The backoff mechanism may be a counter that is drawn randomly within the CWS, which is increased exponentially upon the occurrence of collision and reset to a minimum value when the transmission succeeds. The LBT mechanism designed for LAA is somewhat similar to the CSMA/CA of WLAN. In some implementations, the LBT procedure for DL or UL transmission bursts including PDSCH or PUSCH transmissions, respectively, may have an LAA contention window that is variable in length between X and Y ECCA slots, where X and Y are minimum and maximum values for the CWSs for LAA. In one example, the minimum CWS for an LAA transmission may be 9 microseconds (μs); however, the size of the CWS and a MCOT (for example, a transmission burst) may be based on governmental regulatory requirements. 
     The LAA mechanisms are built upon CA technologies of LTE-Advanced systems. In CA, each aggregated carrier is referred to as a CC. A CC may have a bandwidth of 1.4, 3, 5, 10, 15 or 20 MHz and a maximum of five CCs can be aggregated, and therefore, a maximum aggregated bandwidth is 100 MHz. In FDD systems, the number of aggregated carriers can be different for DL and UL, where the number of UL CCs is equal to or lower than the number of DL component carriers. In some cases, individual CCs can have a different bandwidth than other CCs. In TDD systems, the number of CCs as well as the bandwidths of each CC is usually the same for DL and UL. 
     CA also comprises individual serving cells to provide individual CCs. The coverage of the serving cells may differ, for example, because CCs on different frequency bands will experience different pathloss. A primary service cell or PCell may provide a PCC for both UL and DL, and may handle RRC and NAS related activities. The other serving cells are referred to as SCells, and each SCell may provide an individual SCC for both UL and DL. The SCCs may be added and removed as required, while changing the PCC may require the UE  101  to undergo a handover. In LAA, eLAA, and feLAA, some or all of the SCells may operate in the unlicensed spectrum (referred to as “LAA SCells”), and the LAA SCells are assisted by a PCell operating in the licensed spectrum. When a UE is configured with more than one LAA SCell, the UE may receive UL grants on the configured LAA SCells indicating different PUSCH starting positions within a same subframe. 
     The PDSCH carries user data and higher-layer signaling to the UEs  101 . The PDCCH carries information about the transport format and resource allocations related to the PDSCH channel, among other things. It may also inform the UEs  101  about the transport format, resource allocation, and HARQ information related to the uplink shared channel. Typically, downlink scheduling (assigning control and shared channel resource blocks to the UE  101   b  within a cell) may be performed at any of the RAN nodes  111  based on channel quality information fed back from any of the UEs  101 . The downlink resource assignment information may be sent on the PDCCH used for (e.g., assigned to) each of the UEs  101 . 
     The PDCCH uses CCEs to convey the control information. Before being mapped to resource elements, the PDCCH complex-valued symbols may first be organized into quadruplets, which may then be permuted using a sub-block interleaver for rate matching. Each PDCCH may be transmitted using one or more of these CCEs, where each CCE may correspond to nine sets of four physical resource elements known as REGs. Four Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK) symbols may be mapped to each REG. The PDCCH can be transmitted using one or more CCEs, depending on the size of the DCI and the channel condition. There can be four or more different PDCCH formats defined in LTE with different numbers of CCEs (e.g., aggregation level, L=1, 2, 4, or 8). Some embodiments may use concepts for resource allocation for control channel information that are an extension of the above-described concepts. For example, some embodiments may utilize an EPDCCH that uses PDSCH resources for control information transmission. The EPDCCH may be transmitted using one or more ECCEs. Similar to above, each ECCE may correspond to nine sets of four physical resource elements known as an EREGs. An ECCE may have other numbers of EREGs in some situations. 
     The RAN nodes  111  may be configured to communicate with one another via interface  112 . In embodiments where the system  100  is an LTE system (e.g., when CN  120  is an Evolved Packet Core (EPC)  120 ), the interface  112  may be an X2 interface  112 . The X2 interface may be defined between two or more RAN nodes  111  (e.g., two or more eNBs and the like) that connect to EPC  120 , and/or between two eNBs connecting to EPC  120 . In some implementations, the X2 interface may include an X2 user plane interface (X2-U) and an X2 control plane interface (X2-C). The X2-U may provide flow control mechanisms for user data packets transferred over the X2 interface, and may be used to communicate information about the delivery of user data between eNBs. For example, the X2-U may provide specific sequence number information for user data transferred from a MeNB to an SeNB; information about successful in sequence delivery of PDCP PDUs to a UE  101  from an SeNB for user data; information of PDCP PDUs that were not delivered to a UE  101 ; information about a current minimum desired buffer size at the SeNB for transmitting to the UE user data; and the like. The X2-C may provide intra-LTE access mobility functionality, including context transfers from source to target eNBs, user plane transport control, etc.; load management functionality; as well as inter-cell interference coordination functionality. 
     In embodiments where the system  100  is a 5G or NR system (e.g., when CN  120  is an Fifth Generation Core (5GC))  120 , the interface  112  may be an Xn interface  112 . The Xn interface is defined between two or more RAN nodes  111  (e.g., two or more gNBs and the like) that connect to 5GC  120 , between a RAN node  111  (e.g., a gNB) connecting to 5GC  120  and an eNB, and/or between two eNBs connecting to 5GC  120 . In some implementations, the Xn interface may include an Xn user plane (Xn-U) interface and an Xn control plane (Xn-C) interface. The Xn-U may provide non-guaranteed delivery of user plane PDUs and support/provide data forwarding and flow control functionality. The Xn-C may provide management and error handling functionality, functionality to manage the Xn-C interface; mobility support for UE  101  in a connected mode (e.g., CM-CONNECTED) including functionality to manage the UE mobility for connected mode between one or more RAN nodes  111 . The mobility support may include context transfer from an old (source) serving RAN node  111  to new (target) serving RAN node  111 ; and control of user plane tunnels between old (source) serving RAN node  111  to new (target) serving RAN node  111 . A protocol stack of the Xn-U may include a transport network layer built on Internet Protocol (IP) transport layer, and a GTP-U layer on top of a UDP and/or IP layer(s) to carry user plane PDUs. The Xn-C protocol stack may include an application layer signaling protocol (referred to as Xn Application Protocol (Xn-AP)) and a transport network layer that is built on SCTP. The SCTP may be on top of an IP layer, and may provide the guaranteed delivery of application layer messages. In the transport IP layer, point-to-point transmission is used to deliver the signaling PDUs. In other implementations, the Xn-U protocol stack and/or the Xn-C protocol stack may be same or similar to the user plane and/or control plane protocol stack(s) shown and described herein. 
     The RAN  110  is shown to be communicatively coupled to a core network—in this embodiment, core network (CN)  120 . The CN  120  may comprise a plurality of network elements  122 , which are configured to offer various data and telecommunications services to customers/subscribers (e.g., users of UEs  101 ) who are connected to the CN  120  via the RAN  110 . The components of the CN  120  may be implemented in one physical node or separate physical nodes including components to read and execute instructions from a machine-readable or computer-readable medium (e.g., a non-transitory machine-readable storage medium). In some embodiments, NFV may be utilized to virtualize any or all of the above-described network node functions via executable instructions stored in one or more computer-readable storage mediums (described in further detail below). A logical instantiation of the CN  120  may be referred to as a network slice, and a logical instantiation of a portion of the CN  120  may be referred to as a network sub-slice. NFV architectures and infrastructures may be used to virtualize one or more network functions, alternatively performed by proprietary hardware, onto physical resources comprising a combination of industry-standard server hardware, storage hardware, or switches. In other words, NFV systems can be used to execute virtual or reconfigurable implementations of one or more EPC components/functions. 
     The CN  120  includes various core network elements or application functions (AFs) such as those discussed previously. The CN  120  is shown to be communicatively coupled to an application server  130  and a network  150  via an IP communications interface  125 , the one or more server(s)  130  comprise one or more physical and/or virtualized systems for providing functionality (or services) to one or more clients (e.g., UEs  101 ) over a network (e.g., network  150 ). The server(s)  130  may include various computer devices with rack computing architecture component(s), tower computing architecture component(s), blade computing architecture component(s), and/or the like. The server(s)  130  may represent a cluster of servers, a server farm, a cloud computing service, or other grouping or pool of servers, which may be located in one or more datacenters. The server(s)  130  may also be connected to, or otherwise associated with one or more data storage devices (not shown). Moreover, the server(s)  130  may include an operating system (OS) that provides executable program instructions for the general administration and operation of the individual server computer devices, and may include a computer-readable medium storing instructions that, when executed by a processor of the servers, may allow the servers to perform their intended functions. Suitable implementations for the OS and general functionality of servers are known or commercially available, and are readily implemented by persons having ordinary skill in the art. Generally, the server(s)  130  offer applications or services that use IP/network resources. As examples, the server(s)  130  may provide traffic management services, cloud analytics, content streaming services, immersive gaming experiences, social networking and/or microblogging services, and/or other like services. In addition, the various services provided by the server(s)  130  may include initiating and controlling software and/or firmware updates for applications or individual components implemented by the UEs  101 . The server(s)  130  can also be configured to support one or more communication services (e.g., Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) sessions, PTT sessions, group communication sessions, social networking services, etc.) for the UEs  101  via the CN  120 . 
     In some embodiments, the CN  120  may be a 5GC (referred to as “5GC  120 ” or the like), and the RAN  110  may be connected with the CN  120  via an NG interface  113 . In embodiments, the NG interface  113  may be split into two parts, an NG user plane (NG-U) interface  114 , which carries traffic data between the RAN nodes  111  and a UPF, and the S1 control plane (NG-C) interface  115 , which is a signaling interface between the RAN nodes  111  and AMFs. 
     In some embodiments, the CN  120  may be a 5G CN (referred to as “5GC  120 ” or the like), while in other embodiments, the CN  120  may be an EPC). Where CN  120  is an EPC (referred to as “EPC  120 ” or the like), the RAN  110  may be connected with the CN  120  via an S1 interface  113 . In embodiments, the S1 interface  113  may be split into two parts, an S1 user plane (S1-U) interface  114 , which carries traffic data between the RAN nodes  111  and the S-GW, and the S1-MME interface  115 , which is a signaling interface between the RAN nodes  111  and MMEs. 
     The network  150  comprises computers, network connections among the computers, and software routines to enable communication between the computers over network connections. In this regard, the network  150  comprises one or more network elements that may include one or more processors, communications systems (e.g., including network interface controllers, one or more transmitters/receivers connected to one or more antennas, etc.), and computer readable media. Examples of such network elements may include wireless access points (WAPs), home/business servers (with or without radio frequency (RF) communications circuitry), routers, switches, hubs, radio beacons, base stations, picocell or small cell base stations, and/or any other like network device. Connection to the network  150  may be via a wired or a wireless connection using the various communication protocols discussed infra. As used herein, a wired or wireless communication protocol may refer to a set of standardized rules or instructions implemented by a communication device/system to communicate with other devices, including instructions for packetizing/depacketizing data, modulating/demodulating signals, implementation of protocols stacks, and the like. More than one network may be involved in a communication session between the illustrated devices. Connection to the network  150  may require that the computers execute software routines which enable, for example, the seven layers of the OSI model of computer networking or equivalent in a wireless (cellular) phone network. Network  150  may be used to enable relatively long-range communication such as, for example, between the one or more server(s)  130  and one or more UEs  101 . The network  150  may represent the Internet, one or more cellular networks, local area networks, or wide area networks including proprietary and/or enterprise networks, Transfer Control Protocol (TCP)/Internet Protocol (IP)-based network, or combinations thereof. In such embodiments, the network  150  may be associated with network operator who owns or controls equipment and other elements necessary to provide network-related services, such as one or more base stations or access points, one or more servers for routing digital data or telephone calls (for example, a core network or backbone network), etc. 
     As shown by  FIG. 1 , each of the (R)AN nodes  111  and AP  106  are co-located with MEC servers  201   a ,  200   b , and  200   c , respectively. These implementations may be small-cell clouds (SCCs) where a MEC server  201  is co-located with a small cell (e.g., pico-cell, femto-cell, etc.), or may be mobile micro clouds (MCCs) where a MEC server  201  is co-located with a macro-cell (e.g., an eNB, gNB, etc.). The MEC servers  201  may be deployed in a multitude of arrangements other than as shown by  FIG. 1 . In a first example, the MEC servers  201  may be co-located or operated by RNCs, which may be the case for legacy network deployments, such as 3G networks. In a second example, the MEC servers  201  may be deployed at cell aggregation sites or at multi-RAT aggregation points that can be located either within an enterprise or used in public coverage areas. In a third example, the MEC servers  201  may be deployed at the edge of Core Network (CN)  120 . These implementations may be used in follow-me clouds (FMC), where cloud services running at distributed data centers follow the UEs  101  as they roam throughout the network. 
     The (R)AN nodes  111  are shown to be communicatively coupled to a CN  120 —via interface  114  or  115 . In embodiments, the CN  120  may be an evolved packet core (EPC) network, a NextGen Packet Core (NPC) network, a 5G core (5GC), or some other type of CN. The CN  120  may be associated with a network operator who owns or controls equipment and other elements necessary to provide network-related services, such as the (R)AN nodes  111 , one or more servers and/or network function virtualization infrastructure (NFVI) for implementing the various elements of the CN  120  and various elements of the MEC system  200 . In some embodiments, Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) is utilized to virtualize any or all of the above described network node functions via executable instructions stored in one or more computer readable storage mediums. 
     According to various embodiments, task offloading may be “opportunistic”, wherein the MEC system  200  (or MEC server  201   b  selected as the master node in the example of  FIG. 1 ) may offload ML training tasks β 1 -β d  and/or training datasets x 1 -x m  to a UE  101  taking into account the computational complexity of the ML training tasks β 1 -β d  and/or the amount of computational and network/signaling resources available at the UE  101 . For example, a MEC server  201  may offload a certain number and/or type of tasks β 1 -β d , and/or a size and/or type of training data X 1 -X n  based on the quality or strength of its link  103 ,  105 ,  107 , the strength or quality of the computational resources available at the UE  101 , an amount of available memory or a current memory utilization of the UE  101 , and/or based on other operational parameters of (or experienced by) the UE  101 . For some identified tasks, the MEC system  200  may evaluate the offloading opportunity (e.g., the “tradeoff”) with respect to available UEs  101 , in which case the MEC system  200  may offload tasks β 1 -β d  and training datasets x 1 -x m  to certain UEs  101  that are capable of providing output data from performing their respective tasks β 1 -β d  (e.g., calculated partial gradients) back to the MEC server  201  in a desired period of time. 
     In a first example and with reference to  FIG. 1 , the first link  103  that communicatively couples UE  101   a  with (R)AN node  111   a  is a lower quality channel than the second link  103  that communicatively couples UE  101   b  with (R)AN node  111   b . In one version of this first example, the MEC server  201   b  may partition the training data X such that the training dataset x 2  for UE  101   b  has more data points than the training dataset x 1  for UE  101   a . By allowing the UE  101   a  with a lower quality link  103  to perform computations on fewer data points, the UE  101   a  may provide the output data to the MEC server  201  within the desired period of time. In another version of this first example, the MEC server  201   b  may balance the computational load of the underlying ML model y such that more tasks β 2  for UE  101   b  includes more computations or more complex computations than tasks β 1  for UE  101   a . By allowing the UE  101   a  with a lower quality link  103  to perform fewer computations or less complex computations on its dataset x 1 , the UE  101   a  may provide the output data to the MEC server  201  within the desired period of time. In another version of this first example, the training dataset x 1  is locally available at the UE  101   a  and the training dataset x 2  is locally available at the UE  101   b , and the MEC server  201   b  may provide encoding criteria to the UE  101   a  to encode fewer data points within the training dataset x 1  than the number of data points of the training dataset x 2  to be encoded by UE  101   b , such that the UE  101   a  and UE  101   b  provide their encoded datasets to the MEC server  201  within a same or similar amount of time. 
     In a second example and with reference to  FIG. 1 , the UE  101   b  is communicatively coupled with (R)AN node  111   b  via a low quality cellular link  103 , and communicatively coupled with AP  106  with a better quality WiFi link  107 . In this example, the MEC server  201   b  may offload tasks β 2  with training dataset x 2  or encoding criteria to UE  101   b , and request the UE  101   b  to provide the output data to MEC server  201   c  co-located with, or implemented by, AP  106 . 
     In a third example and with reference to  FIG. 1 , the UE  101   b  is communicatively coupled with (R)AN node  111   b  via relatively low quality link  103 . In this example, the UE  101   b  may evaluate and request a relatively close or proximate UE  101   c  having better computation capabilities and a better communication link  107  to AP  106  than the link  103  with the (R)AN node  111   b . In this example, the UE  101   b  may offload one or more computational tasks to the proximate UE  101   c  using a direct link  105  or via a direct, line of sight (LOS) link with a local small cell (e.g., AP  106  in the example of  FIG. 1 ). 
     Based on the operational parameters discussed previously, offloading tradeoffs may be evaluated and optimal or best offloading opportunities may be determined based on the tradeoffs. In a first example, the MEC server  201   b  may evaluate tradeoffs and find an optimal offloading opportunity, and the MEC server  201   b  may send requests directly to one or more edge compute nodes  101 ,  102  to offload certain tasks β 1 -β d . In a second example, the MEC server  201   b  may request other MEC servers  201   a  and  201   c  to assign one or more tasks β 1 -β d  to various edge compute nodes  101 . In a third example, the MEC server  201   b  may consider tasks β 1 -β d  at the application level (e.g., computational capabilities, etc.), and the MEC server  201   b  may request the other MEC servers  201   a  and  201   c  to consider link/channel criteria for offloading tasks β 1 -β d  to individual edge node  101 . 
     As an example of the first embodiment, the MEC server  201   b  includes encoding circuitry coupled with processor circuitry, where the encoding circuitry is arranged to encode a raw dataset into an encoded training dataset X. The raw dataset may be collected from one or more edge compute nodes  101 ,  201  and/or from some other data source. The encoded training dataset X includes a number of extra data points based on the determined coding redundancy. The number of extra data points included in the encoded training dataset X may be the same number of data points as the number of data points in the raw dataset, or the number of extra data points in the encoded training dataset X may be greater than the number of data points in the raw dataset. The encoding circuitry may be arranged to encode the raw dataset using a random linear encoder. Operation of the random linear encoder enables to MEC server  201   b  to select each element of a random generator matrix independently from a normal distribution, a Bernoulli distribution, or some other suitable distribution. The random generator matrix has c number of rows and m number of columns such that any m subset of c rows is a near-orthogonal m×m matrix, where c&gt;m≥1. 
     The processor circuitry is arranged to partition the encoded training dataset X into a set of training data partitions x 1 , x 2 , x 3 , x m-1 , and x m , and assigns each training data partition x 1 , x 2 , x 3 , x m-1 , and x m  to corresponding edge compute nodes  101 ,  201  that are available to perform computations for a distributed ML training process. The number of data points included in each training data partition x 1 , x 2 , x 3 , x m-1 , and x m  is based on one or more operational parameters of the corresponding edge compute nodes  101 ,  201 . The MEC server  201   b  also includes communication circuitry communicatively coupled with the processor circuitry. The communication circuitry is arranged to transmit each training data partition x 1 , x 2 , x 3 , x m-1 , and x m  to corresponding edge compute nodes  101 ,  201 , and receive computed partial gradients from a subset of the corresponding edge compute nodes  101 ,  201 . The processor circuitry is arranged to determine updated ML training parameters (e.g., a full or complete gradient) based on an aggregation of the received computed partial gradients, and the communication circuitry is arranged to transmit the updated ML training parameters to the corresponding heterogeneous compute nodes. 
     In this example, the processor circuitry is arranged to determine the coding redundancy value based on the operational parameters and a load allocation criterion. The load allocation criterion may be based on a minimax criterion. The minimax criterion is a value that maximizes a number of partial gradients to be received from each heterogeneous compute node while minimizing the epoch time. 
     As an example of the second embodiment, the MEC server  201   b  includes processor circuitry arranged to determine a coding redundancy for each edge compute node  101 ,  201  available to perform computations for a distributed ML training process. The coding redundancy indicates a number of encoded data points, which are generated from uncoded data (or raw data) available at each edge compute node  101 ,  201  to be included in a respective encoded training data partition x 1 , x 2 , x 3 , x m-1 , and x m  based on operational parameters of each edge compute node  101 ,  201 . The MEC server  201   b  also includes communication circuitry communicatively coupled with the processor circuitry. The communication circuitry is arranged to transmit an indication of the number of data points and the coding redundancy to each edge compute node  101 ,  201 , receives encoded training data partitions x 1 , x 2 , x 3 , x m-1 , and x m  from a set of the edge compute nodes  101 ,  201 , and also receives first partial gradients based on the uncoded (or raw) data from the set of the edge compute nodes  101 ,  201 . In this example, the processor circuitry is arranged to determine second partial gradients based on the encoded training data partitions x 1 , x 2 , x 3 , x m-1 , and x m , and determine updated ML training parameters (e.g., a full or complete gradient) based on an aggregation of the first partial gradients with the second partial gradients. The communication circuitry is arranged to transmit the updated ML training parameters and/or the aggregated partial gradients to corresponding edge compute nodes  101 ,  201 . The communication circuitry may also be arranged to transmit a probability value with the indication of the number of data points and the coding redundancy to each edge compute node  101 ,  201 . The probability value indicates a probability that the first partial gradient will be received within a predetermined epoch time. Each edge compute node  101 ,  201  uses the probability value to weight the uncoded data before encoding is performed. 
     In this example, the processor circuitry is arranged to determine the coding redundancy based on the operational parameters and a load allocation criterion. The load allocation criterion may be, or may be based on, a minimax criterion. The minimax criterion is a value that maximizes a number of partial gradients to be received from each edge compute nodes  101 ,  201  while minimizing a desired epoch time. The desired epoch time is based on a computation time for computation of the partial gradients at each edge compute node  101 ,  201 , and an amount of time for receiving the partial gradients from respective edge compute node  101 ,  201 . The computation time may also be based on one or more deterministic components and/or one or more stochastic components of the operational parameters of each edge compute node  101 ,  201 . The processor circuitry may also be arranged to determine the coding redundancy based on a desired number of encoded data points to be accepted for determination of the second partial gradients. Additionally, the number of data points to be included in the encoded training data partition, as indicated by the coding redundancy, may be a fraction of a total number of uncoded data points distributed across all computing nodes. 
     In this example, each edge compute node  101 ,  201  includes encoding circuitry arranged to encode their locally available or accessible uncoded (or raw) data into respective training data partitions x 1 , x 2 , x 3 , x m-1 , and x m . The encoding circuitry of each edge compute node  101 ,  201  may use a random linear encoder. In this example, the encoding circuitry of each edge compute node  101 ,  201  may operate a respective random linear encoder to select each element of a random generator matrix independently from a normal distribution, a Bernoulli distribution, or some other suitable distribution. The random generator matrix includes S number of rows and m number of columns such that any m subset of S rows is a near-orthogonal m×m matrix, where δ&gt;m≥1. 
       FIGS. 2-5  show example distributed ML procedures  200 - 500 , respectively, in accordance with various embodiments. For illustrative purposes, the various operations of processes  200 - 500  is described as being performed by one or more data collector nodes  2102  (e.g., including UEs  101   a - c  and/or IoT UEs  101   x  of  FIG. 1 ), one or more edge compute nodes  2101  (e.g., including UEs  101 , one or more MEC servers/hosts  201 , (R)AN nodes  111 , AP  106 , RSUs, relay nodes, distributed units, etc.  FIG. 1 ), and a master node  2112  (e.g., the MEC system  200  or a selected MEC server  201   b  in  FIG. 1 ). Additionally, the various messages/signaling communicated between the data collector nodes  2102 , edge compute nodes  2101 , and the master node  2112  may be sent and received over various interfaces discussed infra with respect to  FIGS. 6-15 , and using the various mechanisms discussed herein including those discussed infra with respect to  FIGS. 6-15 . While particular examples and orders of operations are illustrated  FIGS. 2-5 , the depicted orders of operations should not be construed to limit the scope of the embodiments in any way. Rather, the depicted operations may be re-ordered, broken into additional operations, combined, and/or omitted altogether while remaining within the spirit and scope of the present disclosure. 
       FIG. 2  depicts an example distributed machine learning procedure  200  according to a first embodiment. The distributed machine learning procedure  200  is used for embodiments where training dataset and computational tasks are distributed to one or more edge compute nodes  2101 . Procedure  200  begins at operation  203  where edge compute nodes  2101  provide operational parameters to the master node  2112 , which includes indications of compute node capabilities and operational constraints as discussed previously. The edge compute nodes  2101  may identify their operational parameters using suitable APIs and/or application binary interfaces (ABIs), middleware, drivers, configuration files, trusted application(s), RF measurement mechanisms, and/or other like mechanisms to obtain or identify their respective operational parameters. In some embodiments, the data collector nodes  2102  may also provide their operational parameters to the master node  2112  in a same or similar manner as the edge compute nodes  2101 . The identified operational parameters may be packaged into appropriate messages for communication according to know mechanisms and protocols. Meanwhile, at operation  206 , one or more data collector nodes  2102  and edge compute nodes  2101  provide data to the master node  2112 , which may include raw sensor data or other suitable types of data. The data may be captured using and packaged into appropriate messages for communication according to know mechanisms and protocols, such as those discussed herein. Operations  203  and  206  may repeat as necessary, for example, on a periodic basis, during procedure  200  including during operation of the other operations of procedure  200  discussed infra. 
     At operation  209 , the master node  2112  determines a redundancy and load partitions based on the operational parameters and a load balancing policy. At operation  212 , the master node  2112  encodes the data with the coding redundancy to obtain individual training datasets. At operation  215 , the master node  2112  provides the encoded training datasets to respective edge compute nodes  2101 , and at operation  218 , the master node  2112  provides computational tasks (compute assignments) to the respective edge compute nodes  2101  for calculating output data, such as partial gradients when the underlying ML algorithm is a GD algorithm. At operation  221 , each edge compute node  2101  computes a partial gradient, and at operation  224 , the edge compute nodes  2101  individually provide their respective partial gradients to the master node  2112  once they complete their local calculations. At operation  227 , the master node  2112  aggregates the partial gradients to obtain a complete gradient. Note that, because the coding redundancy was encoded into the individual training datasets at operation  212 , the master node  2112  does not have to wait for each compute node  2101  to provide their partial gradients in order to compute the complete gradient. In addition, the master node  2112  may update the underlying model, and at operation  230 , the master node  2112  provides the updated or refined model back to the edge compute nodes  2101  for the next epoch in the iterative training process. In some embodiments, the complete gradient is provided to the edge compute nodes at operation  230 . At operation  233 , the edge compute nodes  2101  calculate an updated partial gradient, which is then provided to the master node  2112  at operation  236  for further aggregation similar to operation  227  (not shown by  FIG. 2 ). Operations  224 - 236  repeat until the underlying model sufficiently converges. 
     In the example of  FIG. 2 , training is performed for a supervised machine learning problem (e.g., a GD algorithm) based on a dataset {(X k , y k )} k=1 . . . m  to learn underlying model parameters β∈R d , wherein X k  is the total training data, k is a number of data points (or training symbols) in X k  where k=k to m, and y k  is an associated model level related to each of the data in X k  (e.g., where the underlying model is a single or multi-level model). Each training label is a row vector of training symbols X k =[x k,1 , . . . , x k,d ]∈R 1×d  and y k ∈R is an associated scalar measurement. Under the linear model, the training data can be represented by equation 0. 
         Y=Xβ+n   (equation 0)
 
     In equation 0, β is the model to be created, X is the input data, and Y is/are the output variables. In addition, for equation 0, 
     
       
         
           
             X 
             ⁢ 
             
               = 
               Δ 
             
             ⁢ 
             
               ( 
               
                 
                   
                     
                       X 
                       1 
                     
                   
                 
                 
                   
                     ⋮ 
                   
                 
                 
                   
                     
                       X 
                       m 
                     
                   
                 
               
               ) 
             
           
         
       
     
     is an m×d training symbol matrix, 
     
       
         
           
             β 
             ⁢ 
             
               = 
               Δ 
             
             ⁢ 
             
               ( 
               
                 
                   
                     
                       β 
                       1 
                     
                   
                 
                 
                   
                     ⋮ 
                   
                 
                 
                   
                     
                       β 
                       d 
                     
                   
                 
               
               ) 
             
           
         
       
     
     is a d×1 unknown model parameter matrix, 
     
       
         
           
             n 
             ⁢ 
             
               = 
               Δ 
             
             ⁢ 
             
               ( 
               
                 
                   
                     
                       n 
                       1 
                     
                   
                 
                 
                   
                     ⋮ 
                   
                 
                 
                   
                     
                       n 
                       m 
                     
                   
                 
               
               ) 
             
           
         
       
     
     is an m×1 measurement noise (e.g., Gaussian) matrix, and 
     
       
         
           
             Y 
             ⁢ 
             
               = 
               Δ 
             
             ⁢ 
             
               ( 
               
                 
                   
                     
                       y 
                       1 
                     
                   
                 
                 
                   
                     ⋮ 
                   
                 
                 
                   
                     
                       y 
                       m 
                     
                   
                 
               
               ) 
             
           
         
       
     
     is an m×1 measurement vector collected for training. 
     Gradient descent (GD) is an optimization algorithm used to minimize a target function by iteratively moving in the direction of a steepest descent as defined by a negative of the gradient. An objective of GD in machine learning (ML) is to utilize a training dataset D in order to accurately estimate the unknown model β over one or more epochs r. In ML, GD is used to update the parameters of the unknown model β. Parameters refer to coefficients in linear regression and weights in a neural network. These objectives are realized in an iterative fashion by computing β (r)  at the r-th epoch, and evaluating a gradient associated with the squared-error cost function defined by f(β (r) )=∥Xβ (r) −Y∥ 2 . The cost function indicates how accurate the model β is at making predictions for a given set of parameters. The cost function has a corresponding curve and corresponding gradients, where the slope of the cost function curve indicates how the parameters should be changed to make the model β more accurate. In other words, the model β is used to make predictions, and the cost function is used to update the parameters for the model β. The gradient of the aforementioned squared-error cost function is given by equation 1, and β (r)  is updated at each epoch r according to equation 2 
     
       
         
           
             
               
                 
                   
                     
                       ∇ 
                       β 
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     
                       f 
                       ⁡ 
                       
                         ( 
                         
                           β 
                           
                             ( 
                             r 
                             ) 
                           
                         
                         ) 
                       
                     
                   
                   = 
                   
                     
                       X 
                       ′ 
                     
                     ⁡ 
                     
                       ( 
                       
                         
                           X 
                           ⁢ 
                           
                               
                           
                           ⁢ 
                           
                             β 
                             
                               ( 
                               r 
                               ) 
                             
                           
                         
                         - 
                         Y 
                       
                       ) 
                     
                   
                 
               
               
                 
                   ( 
                   
                     equation 
                     ⁢ 
                     
                         
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     1 
                   
                   ) 
                 
               
             
             
               
                 
                   
                     β 
                     
                       ( 
                       
                         r 
                         + 
                         1 
                       
                       ) 
                     
                   
                   = 
                   
                     
                       β 
                       
                         ( 
                         r 
                         ) 
                       
                     
                     - 
                     
                       
                         μ 
                         m 
                       
                       ⁢ 
                       
                         
                           ∇ 
                           β 
                         
                         ⁢ 
                         
                           f 
                           ⁡ 
                           
                             ( 
                             
                               β 
                               
                                 ( 
                                 r 
                                 ) 
                               
                             
                             ) 
                           
                         
                       
                     
                   
                 
               
               
                 
                   ( 
                   
                     equation 
                     ⁢ 
                     
                         
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     2 
                   
                   ) 
                 
               
             
           
         
       
     
     In equation 2, m is the total number of observations (i.e., data points), μ is a learning rate (also referred to as an update parameter or step size) for moving down a particular gradient, where 0&lt;μ≤1, and ∇ βf (β (r) ) is a prediction based on the model β(r) In general, μ is designed to be a relatively small value, such as 0.01 or 0.001 to improve precision and avoid overshot issues. However, using a low learning rate may be more time consuming when calculating the gradient. Additionally, β (0)  may be initialized arbitrarily. GD involves computing equations 1 and 2 in tandem until the model parameters converge sufficiently. The gradient in equation 1 requires multiplications involving matrices and vectors of large sizes. Therefore, GD becomes computationally prohibitive as dataset and model parameters become massive. 
     In order to meet computation demand of equation 1 according to a first embodiment, one approach is to distribute the training dataset across many edge compute nodes  2101  that can locally compute partial gradients from respective data subsets (see e.g., operation  224  in  FIG. 2 ) and communicate the computed partial gradients back to the master node  2112  for aggregation (see e.g., operation  227  in  FIG. 2 ). More specifically, equation 1 can be decomposed into m partial sums as shown by equation 3. 
     
       
         
           
             
               
                 
                   
                     
                       ∇ 
                       β 
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     
                       f 
                       ⁡ 
                       
                         ( 
                         
                           β 
                           
                             ( 
                             r 
                             ) 
                           
                         
                         ) 
                       
                     
                   
                   = 
                   
                     
                       ∑ 
                       
                         k 
                         = 
                         1 
                       
                       m 
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     
                         
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     
                       
                         X 
                         k 
                         ′ 
                       
                       ⁡ 
                       
                         ( 
                         
                           
                             
                               X 
                               k 
                             
                             ⁢ 
                             
                                 
                             
                             ⁢ 
                             
                               β 
                               
                                 ( 
                                 r 
                                 ) 
                               
                             
                           
                           - 
                           
                             y 
                             k 
                           
                         
                         ) 
                       
                     
                   
                 
               
               
                 
                   ( 
                   
                     equation 
                     ⁢ 
                     
                         
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     3 
                   
                   ) 
                 
               
             
           
         
       
     
     In an uncoded distributed gradient computing, the training dataset D is uniformly distributed to edge compute nodes  2101 . The edge compute nodes  2101  compute the partial sums corresponding to their respective data subsets in equation 3 to evaluate partial gradients and send them back to the master node  2112  for aggregation (see e.g., operation  227  in  FIG. 2 ). The master node  2112  can then use equation 2 to update the model and communicate the updated model back to the working compute nodes  2101  (see e.g., operation  230  in  FIG. 2 ), and this process is repeated at each epoch until the model converges. 
     In a heterogeneous computing environment (e.g., environment  100  of  FIG. 1 ), non-dedicated compute nodes  2101  are used for on-demand distributed gradient computing. Therefore, each compute node  2101  may have different operational parameters (e.g., processing speeds/rates, memory constraints, active running processes, link/channel conditions, different operating environments, etc.). One way to statistically represent the heterogeneity of the heterogeneous computing environment  100  is to model the computation time at each compute node  2101  as a shifted exponential random variable T k  given by equation 3.1. 
         T   k   =T   k,1   +T   k,2   (equation 3.1)
 
     In equation 3.1, the deterministic component T k,1  depends on the processing rate and the number of data points assigned to the k-th device (e.g., compute node  2101   k ), and the random component T k,2  models randomness coming from memory read/write cycles required during multiply-accumulate operations for computing the partial gradient at the k-th device (e.g., compute node  2101   k ). As mentioned previously, the wireless communication links  103 ,  107  between the master node  2112  and worker nodes  2101  may have stochastic fluctuations in link quality. In order to maintain reliable service, link adaptation becomes imperative where wireless links are periodically measured and achievable data rates are adjusted. In particular, a wireless link between the master node  2112  and the k-th edge compute node  2101   k  may be given by (r k ,p k ), where r k  is the achievable bits per channel use in order to have an erasure probability smaller than p k . In various embodiments, the rate r k  is dynamically adapted with respect to the changing link quality in order to maintain a constant erasure probability p (or p k ) during the entire gradient computation (see e.g., operation  227  of  FIG. 2 ). As alluded to previously, an uncoded gradient computation carried out according to equation 3 may perform poorly due to the straggler effect coming from either the computation time and/or the link quality or both. Therefore, in various embodiments, the training datasets are encoded with a suitable coding redundancy (see e.g., operations  209  and  2112  of  FIG. 2 ). Examples of coding redundancy calculation and load balancing (partitioning) according to the first embodiment is discussed in more detail with respect to  FIG. 12 . 
     According to the first embodiment, the training data may be (en)coded to tackle the straggler effect described previously. In various embodiments, linear random coding is performed on a training dataset D. In particular, a random generator matrix G, with elements drawn independently from a standard normal distribution, applied at the master node on the training dataset to obtain a coded training dataset {tilde over (D)}=({tilde over (X)},{tilde over (Y)}), where {tilde over (X)}=G X, and {tilde over (Y)}=G Y. 
     The dimension of G is a measure of coding redundancy. If G is a c×m matrix, then the fraction 
     
       
         
           
             
               c 
               m 
             
             ≥ 
             1 
           
         
       
     
     is the coding overhead incurred. Here, c is the coding redundancy, and m is the number of data points that are used to calculate the gradient (i.e., the m partial sums discussed previously). In other words, m is the number of data points over which a partial gradient is calculated. The amount of redundancy depends on the operational parameter heterogeneities {(T k , r k )} k=1, . . . , n . The coded dataset is partitioned into n disjointed groups, {({tilde over (X)} k , {tilde over (Y)} k )} k=1, . . . , n , where {tilde over (X)} k ∈R l     k     ×d  and {tilde over (Y)} k ∈R l     k     ×1 , such that Σ k=1   n l k =c. The n disjointed groups may be referred to as “partitions,” and each partition is assigned to its respective edge compute node  2101  (see e.g., operation  209  of  FIG. 2 ). In one example, encoding circuitry of the master node  2112  may encode each training dataset using a random linear encoder. In this example, the encoding circuitry may operate the random linear encoder to select each element of a random generator matrix independently from a normal distribution or from a Bernoulli distribution. The random generator matrix includes c number of rows and m number of columns such that any m subset of c rows is a near-orthogonal m×m matrix, where c&gt;m≥1. 
       FIG. 3  depicts a load partitioning process  300  according to the first embodiment. Process  300  is used for computing a coding redundancy c and for performing load balancing or partitioning (see e.g., operation  209  of  FIG. 2 ), which is eventually followed by decoding and aggregation of obtained partial gradients (see e.g., operation  227  of  FIG. 2 ). Process  300  begins at operation  303  where individual edge compute nodes  2101  provide operational parameters to the master node  2112 . In this example, the edge compute nodes  2101  provide a link/channel quality indication for their respective links  103 ,  107  (e.g., given as (r k ,p k ), where k is a number from 1 to n), and a processing capabilities indication (e.g., given as (a k ,μ k ), where k is a number from 1 to n), which are then feed into a load balancing (or data partitioning) engine  310  at operation  306 . The load balancing engine  310  is operated by the master node  2112  to execute the illustrated algorithm including operations  309 - 327 . 
     At operation  309 , the load balancing engine  310  identifies, determines, or reads in various parameters including a fixed time t, a unit time Δt (which may indicate a predicted processing time for an edge compute node  2101  for a given number of data points or some other suitable time value), and a tolerance parameter Δm. For the fixed time t, the aggregate return until time t for any epoch is defined as a random variable as shown by equation 4. 
     
       
         
           
             
               
                 
                   
                     R 
                     ⁡ 
                     
                       ( 
                       
                         t 
                         ; 
                         l 
                       
                       ) 
                     
                   
                   = 
                   
                     
                       
                         ∑ 
                         
                           i 
                           = 
                           1 
                         
                         n 
                       
                       ⁢ 
                       
                           
                       
                       ⁢ 
                       
                         R 
                         ⁡ 
                         
                           ( 
                           
                             t 
                             ; 
                             
                               l 
                               i 
                             
                           
                           ) 
                         
                       
                     
                     = 
                     
                       
                         ∑ 
                         
                           i 
                           = 
                           1 
                         
                         n 
                       
                       ⁢ 
                       
                           
                       
                       ⁢ 
                       
                         
                           l 
                           i 
                         
                         ⁢ 
                         
                           1 
                           
                             { 
                             
                               
                                 T 
                                 i 
                               
                               ≤ 
                               t 
                             
                             } 
                           
                         
                       
                     
                   
                 
               
               
                 
                   ( 
                   
                     equation 
                     ⁢ 
                     
                         
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     4 
                   
                   ) 
                 
               
             
           
         
       
     
     In equation 4, for a load allocation l, the aggregate return denotes the total number of points in the (en)coded dataset that have been processed at the edge compute nodes  2101 , and the corresponding partial gradients that have been (or will be) received at the master node until time t in any epoch r. At operation  312 , the load balancing engine  310  determines a load allocation for each edge compute node  2101   i  where i is a number from 1 to n. For each edge compute node  2101   i , l i *(t) is defined by equation 5. 
         l   i *( t )=arg l     i    max  E ( R   i ( t,l   i ))  (equation 5)
 
     Equation 5, in turn, maximizes the expectation of the aggregate return defined in equation 4. In equation 5, l i *(t) is the load allocation (or partition) for a particular compute node  2101   i  at time t, where the sum of all of the load partitions l i *(t) for all edge compute nodes  2101  is equal to the coding redundancy c. The coding redundancy c may be the total number of encoded data points to be distributed, where l i *(t) is a certain portion of those encoded datapoints. At operation  315 , the load balancing engine  310  determines a maximum aggregate return until time t (MART). Based on equation 5, the maximum expected aggregate return until time t (MART) is denoted by equation 6. 
     
       
         
           
             
               
                 
                   
                     E 
                     ⁡ 
                     
                       ( 
                       
                         R 
                         ⁡ 
                         
                           ( 
                           
                             t 
                             ; 
                             
                               
                                 l 
                                 * 
                               
                               ⁡ 
                               
                                 ( 
                                 t 
                                 ) 
                               
                             
                           
                           ) 
                         
                       
                       ) 
                     
                   
                   = 
                   
                     
                       ∑ 
                       
                         i 
                         = 
                         1 
                       
                       n 
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     
                         
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     
                       E 
                       ⁡ 
                       
                         ( 
                         
                           R 
                           ⁡ 
                           
                             ( 
                             
                               t 
                               ; 
                               
                                 
                                   l 
                                   i 
                                   * 
                                 
                                 ⁡ 
                                 
                                   ( 
                                   t 
                                   ) 
                                 
                               
                             
                             ) 
                           
                         
                         ) 
                       
                     
                   
                 
               
               
                 
                   ( 
                   
                     equation 
                     ⁢ 
                     
                         
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     6 
                   
                   ) 
                 
               
             
           
         
       
     
     At operation  318 , the load balancing engine  310  determines whether the MART is greater than or equal to the number of data points m and less than or equal to a combination of the number of data points m and the tolerance parameter Δm. In embodiments, t*   may be obtained based on a solution to the optimization problem of equation 7. In equation 7, Δm is the tolerance parameter. 
     
       
         
           
             
               
                 
                   
                     min 
                     ⁢ 
                     
                         
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     t 
                     ⁢ 
                     
                         
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     such 
                     ⁢ 
                     
                         
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     that 
                     ⁢ 
                     
                         
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     m 
                   
                   ≤ 
                   
                     E 
                     ⁡ 
                     
                       ( 
                       
                         R 
                         ⁡ 
                         
                           ( 
                           
                             t 
                             ; 
                             
                               
                                 l 
                                 * 
                               
                               ⁡ 
                               
                                 ( 
                                 t 
                                 ) 
                               
                             
                           
                           ) 
                         
                       
                       ) 
                     
                   
                   ≤ 
                   
                     m 
                     + 
                     
                       Δ 
                       ⁢ 
                       
                           
                       
                       ⁢ 
                       m 
                     
                   
                 
               
               
                 
                   ( 
                   
                     equation 
                     ⁢ 
                     
                         
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     7 
                   
                   ) 
                 
               
             
           
         
       
     
     If the determination at operation  318  (e.g., equation 7) is true, the load balancing engine  310  ends the load balancing/partitioning algorithm, and generates the coding redundancy c and the load partitions l i *(t) for each edge compute node  2101 . If the determination at operation  318  (e.g., equation 7) is false, the load balancing engine  310  proceeds to operation  321  to determine whether the MART is less than the number of data points m. If the determination at operation  321  is true, then the load balancing engine  310  increments the fixed time t by the unit time Δt at operation  327 . If the determination at operation  321  is true, then the load balancing engine  310  decrements the fixed time t by the unit time Δt at operation  324 . This process repeats until operation  318  (e.g., equation 7) is determined to be true, at which point, the load balancing engine  310  ends the load balancing/partitioning algorithm, and generates the coding redundancy c and the load partitions l i *(t) for each edge compute node  2101 . Then the load balancing engine  310  provides the coding redundancy c and the load partitions l i *(t) for each edge compute node  2101  to, for example, encoding circuitry of the master node  2112  to be encoded for each edge compute node  2101  at operation  330 . 
     According to various embodiments, the master node  2112  decodes the partial gradients by aggregating the partial gradients. At each epoch, the master node receives partial gradients corresponding to the subsets of the coded dataset assigned to the working compute nodes  2101 . Irrespective of the amount of coding redundancy c, it suffices to collect enough partial gradients that cover at least m coded data points. The k-th edge compute nodes  2101  computes the partial gradient corresponding to its assigned subset of the coded dataset as shown by equation 8.1, and sends the computed partial gradient back to the master node. The master node waits for coded partial gradients received from the first p edge compute nodes  2101  such that Σ k=1   p l k ≥m. After the master node receives coded partial gradients from the first p edge compute nodes  2101 , the master node combines the received partial gradients to obtain a full or complete coded gradient according to equation 8.2. 
     
       
         
           
             
               
                 
                   
                     
                       X 
                       ~ 
                     
                     k 
                     ′ 
                   
                   ⁡ 
                   
                     ( 
                     
                       
                         
                           
                             X 
                             ~ 
                           
                           k 
                         
                         ⁢ 
                         
                             
                         
                         ⁢ 
                         
                           β 
                           
                             ( 
                             r 
                             ) 
                           
                         
                       
                       - 
                       
                         
                           Y 
                           ~ 
                         
                         k 
                       
                     
                     ) 
                   
                 
               
               
                 
                   ( 
                   
                     equation 
                     ⁢ 
                     
                         
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     8.1 
                   
                   ) 
                 
               
             
             
               
                 
                   
                     ∑ 
                     
                       q 
                       = 
                       1 
                     
                     m 
                   
                   ⁢ 
                   
                       
                   
                   ⁢ 
                   
                     
                       
                         X 
                         ~ 
                       
                       q 
                       ′ 
                     
                     ⁡ 
                     
                       ( 
                       
                         
                           
                             
                               X 
                               ~ 
                             
                             q 
                           
                           ⁢ 
                           
                               
                           
                           ⁢ 
                           
                             β 
                             
                               ( 
                               r 
                               ) 
                             
                           
                         
                         - 
                         
                           
                             y 
                             ~ 
                           
                           q 
                         
                       
                       ) 
                     
                   
                 
               
               
                 
                   ( 
                   
                     equation 
                     ⁢ 
                     
                         
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     8.2 
                   
                   ) 
                 
               
             
           
         
       
     
     In equation 8.2, q represents the q-th row from the coded dataset {tilde over (D)}. When the random generator matrix G can be written as 
     
       
         
           
             
               G 
               ⁢ 
               
                 = 
                 Δ 
               
               ⁢ 
               
                 ( 
                 
                   
                     
                       
                         g 
                         1 
                       
                     
                   
                   
                     
                       ⋮ 
                     
                   
                   
                     
                       
                         g 
                         c 
                       
                     
                   
                 
                 ) 
               
             
             , 
           
         
       
     
     wherein g k ∈R 1×m  is a row vector, equation 8 can be written as equation 9. 
     
       
         
           
             
               
                 
                   
                     
                       ∑ 
                       
                         q 
                         = 
                         1 
                       
                       m 
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     
                         
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     
                       
                         X 
                         ′ 
                       
                       ⁢ 
                       
                         
                           g 
                           q 
                           ′ 
                         
                         ⁡ 
                         
                           ( 
                           
                             
                               
                                 g 
                                 q 
                               
                               ⁢ 
                               X 
                               ⁢ 
                               
                                   
                               
                               ⁢ 
                               
                                 β 
                                 
                                   ( 
                                   r 
                                   ) 
                                 
                               
                             
                             - 
                             
                               
                                 g 
                                 q 
                               
                               ⁢ 
                               Y 
                             
                           
                           ) 
                         
                       
                     
                   
                   = 
                   
                     
                       
                         ∑ 
                         
                           q 
                           = 
                           1 
                         
                         m 
                       
                       ⁢ 
                       
                           
                       
                       ⁢ 
                       
                         
                           X 
                           ′ 
                         
                         ⁢ 
                         
                           g 
                           q 
                           ′ 
                         
                         ⁢ 
                         
                           
                             g 
                             q 
                           
                           ⁡ 
                           
                             ( 
                             
                               
                                 X 
                                 ⁢ 
                                 
                                     
                                 
                                 ⁢ 
                                 
                                   β 
                                   
                                     ( 
                                     r 
                                     ) 
                                   
                                 
                               
                               - 
                               Y 
                             
                             ) 
                           
                         
                       
                     
                     = 
                     
                       
                         
                           X 
                           ′ 
                         
                         ⁡ 
                         
                           ( 
                           
                             
                               ∑ 
                               
                                 q 
                                 = 
                                 1 
                               
                               m 
                             
                             ⁢ 
                             
                                 
                             
                             ⁢ 
                             
                               
                                 g 
                                 q 
                                 ′ 
                               
                               ⁢ 
                               
                                 g 
                                 q 
                               
                             
                           
                           ) 
                         
                       
                       ⁢ 
                       
                           
                       
                       ⁢ 
                       
                         ( 
                         
                           
                             X 
                             ⁢ 
                             
                                 
                             
                             ⁢ 
                             
                               β 
                               
                                 ( 
                                 r 
                                 ) 
                               
                             
                           
                           - 
                           Y 
                         
                         ) 
                       
                     
                   
                 
               
               
                 
                   ( 
                   
                     equation 
                     ⁢ 
                     
                         
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     9 
                   
                   ) 
                 
               
             
           
         
       
     
     From the weak law of large numbers, 
     
       
         
           
             
               1 
               m 
             
             ⁢ 
             
               
                 ∑ 
                 
                   q 
                   = 
                   1 
                 
                 m 
               
               ⁢ 
               
                   
               
               ⁢ 
               
                 
                   g 
                   q 
                   ′ 
                 
                 ⁢ 
                 
                   g 
                   q 
                 
               
             
           
         
       
     
     will be an identity matrix. Therefore, the combined coded gradient given by equation 8.2 can be normalized by m to obtain an approximation of the uncoded full gradient in equation 1, which is shown by equation 10. 
     
       
         
           
             
               
                 
                   
                     
                       lim 
                       
                         m 
                         → 
                         ∞ 
                       
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     
                       
                         1 
                         m 
                       
                       ⁢ 
                       
                         
                           ∑ 
                           
                             q 
                             = 
                             1 
                           
                           m 
                         
                         ⁢ 
                         
                             
                         
                         ⁢ 
                         
                           
                             
                               X 
                               ~ 
                             
                             q 
                             ′ 
                           
                           ⁡ 
                           
                             ( 
                             
                               
                                 
                                   
                                     X 
                                     ~ 
                                   
                                   q 
                                 
                                 ⁢ 
                                 
                                     
                                 
                                 ⁢ 
                                 
                                   β 
                                   
                                     ( 
                                     r 
                                     ) 
                                   
                                 
                               
                               - 
                               
                                 
                                   y 
                                   ~ 
                                 
                                 q 
                               
                             
                             ) 
                           
                         
                       
                     
                   
                   = 
                   
                     
                       X 
                       ′ 
                     
                     ⁡ 
                     
                       ( 
                       
                         
                           X 
                           ⁢ 
                           
                               
                           
                           ⁢ 
                           
                             β 
                             
                               ( 
                               r 
                               ) 
                             
                           
                         
                         - 
                         Y 
                       
                       ) 
                     
                   
                 
               
               
                 
                   ( 
                   
                     equation 
                     ⁢ 
                     
                         
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     10 
                   
                   ) 
                 
               
             
           
         
       
     
     Based on equation 10, the embodiments herein provide zero decoding complexity at the master node  2112 . 
     A simulation was performed for the first embodiment, which included a simulation of a heterogeneous computing environment with 24 edge compute nodes  2101  and one master node  2112 . The simulation used an LTE network, where each edge compute node  2101  was assigned  3  resource blocks with uplink and downlink channels having similar channel quality statistics. Furthermore, the link capacities (normalized) were generated using {1, kFac1, kFac1 2 , . . . , kFac1 23 } and a random permutation of the link capacities were assigned to the edge compute nodes  2101 . Similarly, the processing capabilities/constraints (normalized) for the edge compute nodes  2101  were generated using {1, kFac2, kFac2 2 , . . . , kFac2 23 }. The training dataset was m=7200 data points, and the dimension of the model was d=500. The training dataset was generated using the standard method, y=Xβ true +n, where X and n were sampled from a standard normal distribution. 
     The results of the simulation compared the performance of the distributed ML scheme of the first embodiment with an uncoded scheme and a repetition scheme, where (kFac1, kFac2)=(0.9,0.9). The results of the simulation included a comparison of a least squares (LS) estimate of the true (uncoded) model, an uncoded error curve for the uncoded scheme with equal allocation, a coded LS estimate of the true (uncoded) model with a coded dataset, a coded error curve of the distributed ML scheme of the first embodiment, and repetition error curve corresponding to the repetition scheme. For the repetition scheme, each data point was processed at two edge compute nodes  2101 , and thus, the coding overhead was c=2m. The coding overhead for the distributed ML scheme of the first embodiment was c=1.27m. Using the distributed ML scheme according to the first embodiment, the model β converges to the least squares solution with the coded dataset. Although the error in estimation of the true model β is larger in comparison to the uncoded and repetition schemes, the overall time for convergence is much less than the uncoded and repetition schemes. 
     The results of the simulation also included comparing the ratio of the mean convergence times for the distributed ML scheme of the first embodiment for different realizations of (kfac1, kFac2). The mean was obtained using twenty different datasets, and a stopping criterion was used for convergence, which is shown by equation 11. 
     
       
         
           
             
               
                 
                   
                     
                       
                          
                         
                           
                             β 
                             
                               r 
                               + 
                               1 
                             
                           
                           - 
                           
                             β 
                             r 
                           
                         
                          
                       
                       2 
                     
                     
                       
                          
                         
                           β 
                           r 
                         
                          
                       
                       2 
                     
                   
                   &lt; 
                   
                     1 
                     ⁢ 
                     
                       0 
                       
                         - 
                         8 
                       
                     
                   
                 
               
               
                 
                   ( 
                   
                     equation 
                     ⁢ 
                     
                         
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     11 
                   
                   ) 
                 
               
             
           
         
       
     
     The simulation results show that the distributed ML scheme of the first embodiment has a superior performance in comparison to the uncoded scheme for all heterogeneity levels. When the system is homogeneous, for example, when (kFac1, kFac2)=(1,1), the distributed ML scheme of the first embodiment has similar performance as the uncoded scheme. 
     While the first embodiment is related to scenarios where the training dataset was centrally available at the master node  2112 , a distributed ML scheme of a second embodiment is described infra where data resides with the edge compute nodes  2101 , and the edge compute nodes  2101  perform the encoding computations themselves. In the second embodiment, the data collectors  2102  and the edge compute nodes  2101  may be considered identical, and the master node  2112  determines and distributes the appropriate level of redundant computations rather than performing load balancing across all nodes  2101 ,  2102 , and completes the coordination and aggregation function of the partial gradients computed locally at the nodes  2101 ,  2102 . 
       FIG. 4  depicts an example distributed machine learning procedure  400  according to a second embodiment. The distributed machine learning procedure  400  is used for embodiments where training data is locally accessible by one or more edge compute nodes  2101 , and computational tasks and encoding parameters are distributed to those edge compute nodes  2101 . Procedure  400  begins at operation  403  where edge compute nodes  2101  provide operational parameters to the master node  2112 , which includes indications of compute node capabilities and operational constraints as discussed previously. In some embodiments, the data collector nodes  2102  may also provide their operational parameters to the master node  2112  in a same or similar manner as the edge compute nodes  2101 . Meanwhile, at operation  406 , one or more data collector nodes  2102  and/or edge compute nodes  2101  provide data parameters to the master node  2112 , which may include information about the particular type of data locally accessible by the edge compute nodes  2101  and data collectors  2102  and an indication of the number of data points included in the locally accessible data. The operational parameters and data parameters may be identified using suitable APIs, ABIs, middleware, drivers, configuration files, trusted application(s), RF measurement mechanisms, etc. Additionally, the identified operational parameters and data parameters may be packaged into appropriate messages for communication according to know mechanisms and protocols, such as those discussed herein. Operations  403  and  406  may repeat as necessary, for example, on a periodic basis, during procedure  400  including during operation of the other operations of procedure  400  discussed infra. 
     At operation  409 , the master node  2112  determines a redundancy and load partitions based on the operational parameters, data parameters, and a load balancing policy. At operation  412 , the master node  2112  provides compute parameters to the edge compute nodes  2101 . In this embodiment, the compute parameters may include information about the type of data to be processed by an edge compute node  2101 , the number of data points to be processed by an edge compute node  2101  (e.g., a load partition for the edge compute node  2101 ), a coding redundancy for the edge compute node  2101 , a particular encoding scheme to be used to encode the training data, computational tasks (compute assignments) for calculating output data such as partial gradients when the underlying ML algorithm is a GD algorithm, and other suitable information or parameters. At operation  415 , the edge compute nodes  2101  individually encode their locally available data according to the received compute parameters to obtain individual training datasets, and at operation  418 , the edge compute nodes  2101  individually provide their encoded training datasets to the master node  2112 . 
     At operation  421 , each edge compute node  2101  individually computes a partial gradient on the uncoded version of the encoded data provided to the master node  2112 . Meanwhile at operation  424 , master node  2112  computes partial gradients on the encoded datasets provided at operation  418 . At operation  427 , the edge compute nodes  2101  individually provide their respective partial gradients to the master node  2112  once they complete their local calculations. At operation  430 , the master node  2112  aggregates the partial gradients, including the partial gradients calculated by the edge compute nodes  2101  and the partial gradients calculated by the master node  2112 , to obtain a complete gradient. Note that, because the coding redundancy was encoded into the individual training datasets at operation  418 , the master node  2112  does not have to wait for each compute node  2101  to provide their computed partial gradients in order to compute the complete gradient. In addition, the master node  2112  may update the underlying model, and at operation  433 , the master node  2112  provides the updated or refined model back to the edge compute nodes  2101  for the next epoch in the iterative training process. In some embodiments, the complete or combined gradient is provided to the edge compute nodes at operation  433 . At operations  436  and  439 , the master node  2112  and the edge compute nodes  2101  calculate an updated partial gradient, respectively. The updated partial gradients computed by the edge compute nodes  2101  are then provided to the master node  2112  at operation  442  for further aggregation similar to operation  227  (not shown by  FIG. 2 ). Operations  421 - 442  repeat until the underlying model sufficiently converges. 
     In the example of  FIG. 4 , training is performed for a supervised machine learning problem (e.g., a GD algorithm) based on a training dataset that is distributed across edge compute nodes  2101 , where each edge compute node  2101  locally compute partial gradients and communicate those partial gradients to the master node  2112  (see e.g., operations  421  and  427  in  FIG. 4 ). The master node  2112  aggregates the received partial gradients to update the model and communicates the updated model back to the edge compute nodes  2101  (see e.g., operations  424 ,  430 , and  433  in  FIG. 4 ). More specifically, it is straightforward to observe that equation 1 discussed previously with respect to  FIG. 2  can be decomposed into n partial sums as shown by equation 12: 
     
       
         
           
             
               
                 
                   
                     
                       ∇ 
                       β 
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     
                       f 
                       ⁡ 
                       
                         ( 
                         
                           β 
                           
                             ( 
                             r 
                             ) 
                           
                         
                         ) 
                       
                     
                   
                   = 
                   
                     
                       ∑ 
                       
                         i 
                         = 
                         1 
                       
                       n 
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     
                       
                         ∑ 
                         
                           k 
                           = 
                           1 
                         
                         
                           l 
                           i 
                           initial 
                         
                       
                       ⁢ 
                       
                         
                           X 
                           k 
                           
                             
                               ( 
                               i 
                               ) 
                             
                             ′ 
                           
                         
                         ⁡ 
                         
                           ( 
                           
                             
                               
                                 X 
                                 k 
                                 
                                   ( 
                                   i 
                                   ) 
                                 
                               
                               ⁢ 
                               
                                 β 
                                 
                                   ( 
                                   r 
                                   ) 
                                 
                               
                             
                             - 
                             
                               y 
                               k 
                               
                                 ( 
                                 i 
                                 ) 
                               
                             
                           
                           ) 
                         
                       
                     
                   
                 
               
               
                 
                   ( 
                   
                     equation 
                     ⁢ 
                     
                         
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     12 
                   
                   ) 
                 
               
             
           
         
       
     
     In equation 12, (X k   (i) ), y k   (i) ) is the k-th element of the training dataset stored at the i-th edge compute node  2101  (also referred to as “edge compute node  2101   i ” or the like), l i   initial  is the number of training data elements available at the edge compute node  2101   i , 
     
       
         
           
             
               
                 X 
                 
                   ( 
                   i 
                   ) 
                 
               
               = 
               
                 [ 
                 
                   
                     
                       
                         X 
                         1 
                         
                           ( 
                           i 
                           ) 
                         
                       
                     
                   
                   
                     
                       ⋮ 
                     
                   
                   
                     
                       
                         x 
                         
                           l 
                           i 
                           initial 
                         
                         
                           ( 
                           i 
                           ) 
                         
                       
                     
                   
                 
                 ] 
               
             
             , 
             
               
 
             
             ⁢ 
             
               
                 y 
                 
                   ( 
                   i 
                   ) 
                 
               
               = 
               
                 [ 
                 
                   
                     
                       
                         y 
                         1 
                         
                           ( 
                           i 
                           ) 
                         
                       
                     
                   
                   
                     
                       ⋮ 
                     
                   
                   
                     
                       
                         y 
                         
                           l 
                           i 
                           initial 
                         
                         
                           ( 
                           i 
                           ) 
                         
                       
                     
                   
                 
                 ] 
               
             
             , 
             
               
 
             
             ⁢ 
             
               
                 
                   ∑ 
                   
                     i 
                     = 
                     i 
                   
                   n 
                 
                 ⁢ 
                 
                   l 
                   i 
                   
                     i 
                     ⁢ 
                     nitial 
                   
                 
               
               = 
               m 
             
           
         
       
     
     is the total training data elements, and 
     
       
         
           
             
               { 
               
                 
                   X 
                   = 
                   
                       
                   
                   ⁢ 
                   
                     [ 
                     
                       
                         
                           
                             X 
                             
                               ( 
                               1 
                               ) 
                             
                           
                         
                       
                       
                         
                           ⋮ 
                         
                       
                       
                         
                           
                             X 
                             
                               ( 
                               n 
                               ) 
                             
                           
                         
                       
                     
                     ] 
                   
                 
                 , 
                 
                   y 
                   = 
                   
                       
                   
                   ⁢ 
                   
                     [ 
                     
                       
                         
                           
                             y 
                             
                               ( 
                               1 
                               ) 
                             
                           
                         
                       
                       
                         
                           ⋮ 
                         
                       
                       
                         
                           
                             y 
                             
                               ( 
                               n 
                               ) 
                             
                           
                         
                       
                     
                     ] 
                   
                 
               
               } 
             
             ⁢ 
             
               = 
               def 
             
             ⁢ 
             D 
           
         
       
     
     is the entire training dataset distributed across n edge compute nodes  2101 . 
     In an uncoded distributed gradient computing, the edge compute nodes  2101  compute the partial sums corresponding to their respective data subsets in equation 12 to evaluate partial gradients, and send them back to the master node  2112  for aggregation. The master node  2112  can then use equation 2 discussed previously to update the model and communicate the updated model back to the edge compute nodes  2101 . This process (e.g., process  400 ) is iterated until sufficient convergence is achieved. 
     As mentioned previously, the heterogeneous computing environment  100  may be statistically represented as using a model of the computation time at each device as a shifted exponential random variable T k  given as T k =T k,1 +T k,2 , where the deterministic component T k,1  depends on the processing rate and the number of data points assigned to the k-th device, and the random component T k,2  models the randomness coming from memory read/write cycles required during multiply-accumulate operations for computing the partial gradient at the k-th device. In addition, the wireless communication links between the master node and the k-th edge compute node  2101  is given by (r k ,q k ), where r k  is the achievable bits per channel use in order to have an erasure probability smaller than q k . It is a typical practice to dynamically adapt the rate r k  with respect to the changing link quality in order to maintain a constant erasure probability q during the entire gradient computation. Examples of how the coding redundancy is calculated and how the load partitioning is achieved according to the second embodiment is discussed in more detail with respect to  FIG. 5 , which is used to address the straggler effect. 
     As alluded to previously, encoding the training data in the second embodiment involves use of the master node  2112  (e.g., a MEC system or one or more selected MEC servers  201 ) with relatively large processing and communication capabilities to aid the execution of ML algorithms, such as the GD algorithms as discussed herein, by executing partial gradients from encoded training data at each epoch to combat the straggling effects. In various embodiments, linear random coding is performed on an entire training dataset D that is distributed across all edge compute nodes  2101 . In particular, the i-th edge compute node  2101  uses a random generator matrix G i  of dimension δ×l i   initial  with elements drawn independently from a standard normal distribution, applies the random generator matrix G i  to the weighted local training dataset to obtain a (en)coded training dataset ({tilde over (X)} (i) ),{tilde over (Y)} (i) ), where {tilde over (X)} (i) =G i W i X (i) , {tilde over (Y)} (i) =G i W i Y (i) , and W i  is a weight matrix (see e.g., operation  415  in  FIG. 4 ). 
     In the second embodiment, the coding redundancy δ depends on the heterogeneity in computing capabilities and constraints, communication capabilities and constraints, and power (energy) budget observed across the edge compute nodes  2101  (including UEs  101  and MEC servers  201 ). The coding redundancy δ may be explicitly computed using a load balancing algorithm discussed infra with respect to  FIG. 5 . The matrix W i  is an l i   initial ×l i   initial  diagonal matrix that weighs each training data point differently. The weight computation is also discussed infra with respect to  FIG. 5 . 
     The locally (en)coded training dataset ({tilde over (X)} (i) ,{tilde over (Y)} (i) ) is transmitted to the master node  2112  (see e.g., operation  418  in  FIG. 4 ), while the generator coefficients are not shared with the master node  2112  or other edge compute nodes  2101 . In other words, the G and W are unknown at the master node  2112 . The uncoded data (or raw data) and/or security keys are not shared with the master node  2112  or other edge compute nodes  2101  as well. In this way, the encoding mechanisms preserve the security of training data and user privacy for each edge compute node  2101 . At the master node  2112 , the locally (en)coded training dataset received from the edge compute nodes  2101  are combined to obtain the overall (en)coded dataset ({tilde over (X)},{tilde over (Y)}) (see e.g., operations  424 - 430  in  FIG. 4 ). In particular, the master node  2112  may compute the complete (en)coded dataset ({tilde over (X)},{tilde over (Y)}) using equation 13, and compute the overall coded label set using equation 14. 
     
       
         
           
             
               
                 
                   
                     
                       X 
                       ˜ 
                     
                     = 
                     
                       
                         
                           ∑ 
                           
                             i 
                             = 
                             1 
                           
                           n 
                         
                         ⁢ 
                         
                           
                             X 
                             ˜ 
                           
                           
                             ( 
                             i 
                             ) 
                           
                         
                       
                       = 
                       
                         
                           
                             ∑ 
                             
                               i 
                               = 
                               1 
                             
                             n 
                           
                           ⁢ 
                           
                             
                               G 
                               i 
                             
                             ⁢ 
                             
                               W 
                               i 
                             
                             ⁢ 
                             
                               X 
                               
                                 ( 
                                 i 
                                 ) 
                               
                             
                           
                         
                         = 
                         GWX 
                       
                     
                   
                   ⁢ 
                   
                     
 
                   
                   ⁢ 
                   
                     where 
                     , 
                     
                       G 
                       = 
                       
                         [ 
                         
                           
                             G 
                             1 
                           
                           , 
                           … 
                           ⁢ 
                           
                               
                           
                           , 
                           
                             G 
                             n 
                           
                         
                         ] 
                       
                     
                     , 
                     
                       
                         and 
                         ⁢ 
                         
                             
                         
                         ⁢ 
                         W 
                       
                       = 
                       
                         [ 
                         
                           
                             
                               
                                 W 
                                 1 
                               
                             
                             
                               … 
                             
                             
                               0 
                             
                           
                           
                             
                               ⋮ 
                             
                             
                               ⋱ 
                             
                             
                               ⋮ 
                             
                           
                           
                             
                               0 
                             
                             
                               … 
                             
                             
                               
                                 W 
                                 n 
                               
                             
                           
                         
                         ] 
                       
                     
                   
                 
               
               
                 
                   ( 
                   
                     equation 
                     ⁢ 
                     
                         
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     13 
                   
                   ) 
                 
               
             
             
               
                 
                   
                     Y 
                     ˜ 
                   
                   = 
                   
                     
                       
                         ∑ 
                         
                           i 
                           = 
                           1 
                         
                         n 
                       
                       ⁢ 
                       
                         
                           Y 
                           ˜ 
                         
                         
                           ( 
                           i 
                           ) 
                         
                       
                     
                     = 
                     GWY 
                   
                 
               
               
                 
                   ( 
                   
                     equation 
                     ⁢ 
                     
                         
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     14 
                   
                   ) 
                 
               
             
           
         
       
     
     The distributed encoding across the entire dataset may be achieved using equations 13 and 14. During each training epoch, each edge compute node  2101  computes a partial gradient from a subset of its locally available uncoded dataset (see e.g., operation  421  in  FIG. 4 ). The size of the data subset is obtained from a load balancing algorithm (see e.g., load balancing algorithm of load balancer  510  of  FIG. 5 ). In particular, a given edge compute node  2101   i  computes partial gradients from a number of uncoded data points l i * that is/are available or accessible locally, where l i *≤l i   initial . The partial gradients are then sent to the master node  2112  (see e.g., operation  427  in  FIG. 4 ). 
     Additionally, the master node  2112  also computes partial gradients from δ coded data points (see e.g., operation  424  in  FIG. 4 ), which is available assuming computing power at the master node  2112  is much larger than at the edge compute nodes  2101 . Therefore, in each training epoch, the master node  2112  waits for partial gradients corresponding to the first arriving (m−δ) number of uncoded data points received from one or more of the edge compute nodes  2101 . 
     The master node  2112  also takes into account the complexity of encoding the locally accessible data points. The encoding complexity is in the order of δ, where it has been observed during simulations that, at extreme heterogeneity, δ may become as large as 30% of the data size. For low complexity encoding using random linear codes, the generator matrix coefficients may be taken from equi-probable Bernoulli distribution of +1 and −1, which may help avoid multiplications during the encoding process. 
     Referring now to  FIG. 5 , which depicts a load partitioning process  500  according to the second embodiment. Process  500  is used for computing an optimal coding redundancy δ, performing load balancing or partitioning, and calculating weight matrices (see e.g., operation  409  of  FIG. 4 ), which is eventually followed by decoding and aggregation of obtained partial gradients computed from uncoded portions of the training data with the partial gradient(s) computed from (en)coded portions of the training data (see e.g., operation  430  of  FIG. 4 ). Process  500  begins at operation  503  where individual edge compute nodes  2101  provide operational parameters (including data parameters) to the master node  2112 . In this example, the edge compute nodes  2101  provide a link/channel quality indication for their respective links  103 ,  107  (e.g., given as (r k ,p k ), where k is a number from 1 to n), a processing capabilities indication (e.g., given as (a k ,μ k ), where k is a number from 1 to n), and a data parameter indication (e.g., given as l k , where k is a number from 1 to n). These parameters are then feed into a load balancing (or data partitioning) engine  510  at operation  506 . The load balancing engine  510  is operated by the master node  2112  to execute the illustrated algorithm including operations  509 - 527 . 
     At operation  509 , the load balancing engine  310  identifies, determines, or reads in various parameters including a fixed time t, a unit time Δt (which may indicate a predicted processing time for an edge compute node  2101  for a given number of data points or some other suitable time value), a tolerance parameter E, and a coding redundancy S. For a fixed time t, the aggregate return received from all edge compute nodes  2101  including those computed at the master node  2112  until time t in any epoch is a random variable defined by equation 15. 
     
       
         
           
             
               
                 
                   
                     R 
                     ⁡ 
                     
                       ( 
                       
                         t 
                         ; 
                         l 
                       
                       ) 
                     
                   
                   = 
                   
                     
                       
                         ∑ 
                         
                           i 
                           = 
                           1 
                         
                         
                           n 
                           + 
                           1 
                         
                       
                       ⁢ 
                       
                         
                           R 
                           i 
                         
                         ⁡ 
                         
                           ( 
                           
                             t 
                             ; 
                             
                               l 
                               i 
                             
                           
                           ) 
                         
                       
                     
                     = 
                     
                       
                         ∑ 
                         
                           i 
                           = 
                           1 
                         
                         
                           n 
                           + 
                           1 
                         
                       
                       ⁢ 
                       
                         
                           l 
                           i 
                         
                         ⁢ 
                         
                           1 
                           
                             { 
                             
                               
                                 T 
                                 i 
                               
                               ≤ 
                               t 
                             
                             } 
                           
                         
                       
                     
                   
                 
               
               
                 
                   ( 
                   
                     equation 
                     ⁢ 
                     
                         
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     15 
                   
                   ) 
                 
               
             
           
         
       
     
     In equation 15, l n+1  is the partial gradients locally computed by the master node  2112  using the coded training data (see e.g., operation  424  of  FIG. 4 ), and the aggregate return R i (t;l i ), where i=1, . . . , n, denotes, for a load allocation l, the average number of uncoded data points that have been processed at the i-th edge compute node  2101  and corresponding partial gradient have been received by the master node  2112  until time t. During each epoch, partial gradient(s) computed from the (en)coded data is available at the master node  2101 , which means T n+1 &lt;min (T 1 , . . . , T n ). 
     At operation  512 , the load balancing engine  510  determines a load allocation for each edge compute node  2101 L. For each edge compute node  21011 , where i=1, . . . , n, the load allocation l i *(t) may be computed using equation 16, and the coding redundancy required for a given time t may be computed using equation 17. 
     
       
         
           
             
               
                 
                   
                     
                       l 
                       i 
                       * 
                     
                     ⁡ 
                     
                       ( 
                       t 
                       ) 
                     
                   
                   = 
                   
                     
                       arg 
                       
                         
                           l 
                           i 
                         
                         ≤ 
                         
                           l 
                           i 
                           initial 
                         
                       
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     
                         
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     max 
                     ⁢ 
                     
                         
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     
                       E 
                       ⁡ 
                       
                         ( 
                         
                           
                             R 
                             i 
                           
                           ⁡ 
                           
                             ( 
                             
                               t 
                               , 
                               
                                 l 
                                 i 
                               
                             
                             ) 
                           
                         
                         ) 
                       
                     
                   
                 
               
               
                 
                   ( 
                   
                     equation 
                     ⁢ 
                     
                         
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     16 
                   
                   ) 
                 
               
             
             
               
                 
                   
                     
                       l 
                       
                         n 
                         + 
                         1 
                       
                       * 
                     
                     ⁡ 
                     
                       ( 
                       t 
                       ) 
                     
                   
                   = 
                   
                     
                       arg 
                       
                         
                           l 
                           
                             n 
                             + 
                             1 
                           
                         
                         ≤ 
                         
                           δ 
                           
                             u 
                             ⁢ 
                             p 
                           
                         
                       
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     max 
                     ⁢ 
                     
                       E 
                       ⁡ 
                       
                         ( 
                         
                           
                             R 
                             
                               n 
                               + 
                               1 
                             
                           
                           ⁡ 
                           
                             ( 
                             
                               t 
                               , 
                               
                                 l 
                                 
                                   n 
                                   + 
                                   1 
                                 
                               
                             
                             ) 
                           
                         
                         ) 
                       
                     
                   
                 
               
               
                 
                   ( 
                   
                     equation 
                     ⁢ 
                     
                         
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     17 
                   
                   ) 
                 
               
             
           
         
       
     
     In equation 17, δ up  denotes the maximum coded load the master node  2112  is willing to receive from edge compute node(s)  2101 . Equation 17 maximizes the expectation of the aggregate return defined in equation 16. 
     At operation  515 , the load balancing engine  510  determines a maximum aggregate return until time t (MART). Based on equations 16 and 17, the maximum expected aggregate return until time t (MART) may be computed using equation 18. 
     
       
         
           
             
               
                 
                   
                     E 
                     ⁡ 
                     
                       ( 
                       
                         R 
                         ⁡ 
                         
                           ( 
                           
                             t 
                             ; 
                             
                               
                                 l 
                                 * 
                               
                               ⁡ 
                               
                                 ( 
                                 t 
                                 ) 
                               
                             
                           
                           ) 
                         
                       
                       ) 
                     
                   
                   = 
                   
                     
                       ∑ 
                       
                         i 
                         = 
                         1 
                       
                       
                         n 
                         + 
                         1 
                       
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     
                       E 
                       ⁡ 
                       
                         ( 
                         
                           
                             R 
                             i 
                           
                           ⁡ 
                           
                             ( 
                             
                               t 
                               ; 
                               
                                 
                                   l 
                                   i 
                                   * 
                                 
                                 ⁡ 
                                 
                                   ( 
                                   t 
                                   ) 
                                 
                               
                             
                             ) 
                           
                         
                         ) 
                       
                     
                   
                 
               
               
                 
                   ( 
                   
                     equation 
                     ⁢ 
                     
                         
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     18 
                   
                   ) 
                 
               
             
           
         
       
     
     At operation  518 , the load balancing engine  510  determines whether the MART is greater than or equal to the number of data points m and less than or equal to a combination of the number of data points m and the tolerance parameter E. In embodiments, t* (or Δt) is obtained as the solution to the optimization problem of equation 19, where E is the tolerance parameter. 
     
       
         
           
             
               
                 
                   
                     min 
                     ⁢ 
                     
                         
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     t 
                     ⁢ 
                     
                         
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     such 
                     ⁢ 
                     
                         
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     that 
                     ⁢ 
                     
                         
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     m 
                   
                   ≤ 
                   
                     E 
                     ⁡ 
                     
                       ( 
                       
                         R 
                         ⁡ 
                         
                           ( 
                           
                             t 
                             ; 
                             
                               
                                 l 
                                 * 
                               
                               ⁡ 
                               
                                 ( 
                                 t 
                                 ) 
                               
                             
                           
                           ) 
                         
                       
                       ) 
                     
                   
                   ≤ 
                   
                     m 
                     + 
                     ϵ 
                   
                 
               
               
                 
                   ( 
                   
                     equation 
                     ⁢ 
                     
                         
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     19 
                   
                   ) 
                 
               
             
           
         
       
     
     If the determination at operation  518  (e.g., equation 19) is true, the load balancing engine  510  proceeds to operation  520  to set the value of the non-return probability p i  based on the MART and the load partitions l*(t*) (discussed in more detail infra). Then the load balancing engine  510  proceeds to end the load balancing/partitioning algorithm, and generates the coding redundancy, the load partition information, weighting information, etc., for each edge compute node  2101 . If the determination at operation  518  (e.g., equation 19) is false, the load balancing engine  510  proceeds to operation  521  to determine whether the MART is less than the number of data points m. If the determination at operation  521  is true, then the load balancing engine  510  increments the fixed time t by the unit time Δt at operation  527 . If the determination at operation  521  is false, then the load balancing engine  510  decrements the fixed time t by the unit time Δt at operation  524 . This process repeats until operation  518  (e.g., equation 19) is determined to be true, at which point, the load balancing engine  510  performs operation  520  and then ends the load balancing/partitioning algorithm, and generates the coding redundancy, load partition information, weighting information, etc., for each edge compute node  2101 . Then the load balancing engine  510  provides the coding redundancy, load partition information, weighting information, etc., for each edge compute node  2101  to each edge compute node  2101  at operation  530 . This information is then provided to an encoder  533  is operated by each edge compute node  2101  to execute the illustrated algorithm including operations  536 - 542   
     In this example, the near optimal load partitions l*(t*) and the minimal coding redundancy δ=l n+1 *(t*) are provided to the encoder  533  of each edge compute node  2101  with a probability p i . At operation  536 , the encoder  533  generates a random generator matrix G δ×ln , and at operation  536 , the encoder  533  generates a weight matrix W i . In embodiments, the weight matrix W i  applied at each edge compute node  2101  is a l i   initial ×l i   initial  diagonal matrix. The k-th diagonal coefficients is/are given by w ik =√{square root over (p i )}, where p i  is the probability that the edge compute node  2101  will not return the partial gradient associated with the l i *(t*) uncoded data points processed at the i-th edge compute node  2101  for k=1, . . . , l i *(t*). For example, the probability p i  may be based on the link/channel quality and/or processing capabilities of the edge compute node  2101 . In particular, p i =Pr{T i ≤t*}. 
     For a given load partition l i *(t*), the probability p i  may be directly computed by the edge compute node  2101   i  using the statistical property of computation time and communication links. Further, there are (l i   initial −l i *(t*)) uncoded data points that are not processed at the edge compute node  2101   i . The diagonal coefficients corresponding to such data points are given by w ik =1, for k=1, . . . , (l i   initial −l i *(t*)). In embodiments, the edge compute node  2101   i  can decide any subset of uncoded initial data to process locally and correspondingly apply the weights before encoding, which may provide another layer of data security and privacy. 
     At operation  542 , the encoder  533  generates (computes) the (en)coded gradients (e.g., as ({tilde over (X)} (i) ,{tilde over (Y)} (i) ), which are then provided to the master node  2112  at operation  545 . As alluded to previously, the encoder  533  of the edge compute node  2101   i  may compute its gradient ({tilde over (X)} (i) ,{tilde over (Y)} (i) ) as {tilde over (X)} (i) =G i W i X (i) , and {tilde over (Y)} (i) =G i W i Y (i) . In each epoch there may be a mixture of partial gradients available at the master node  2112 . One set of partial gradients are computed entirely by the master node  2112  from δ (en)coded training dataset ({tilde over (X)},{tilde over (Y)}) given by equations 13 and 14. In embodiments, the master node  2112  computes the partial gradient from the (en)coded dataset using equation 20. 
         {tilde over (X)} ′( {tilde over (X)}β   (r)   −{tilde over (Y)} )  (equation 20)
 
     The other set of partial gradients are computed by the edge compute nodes  2101  on their local uncoded data at operation  542 , and transmitted to the master node  2112  at operation  545 . The master node  2112  only waits to receive partial gradients corresponding to the first (m−δ) datapoints. In particular, the master node  2112  waits for the first N edge compute nodes  2101  such that the allocated load satisfies Σ k=1   N l k *(t*)≥(m−δ). The aggregated partial gradient from uncoded dataset is given by equation 21, and the master node  2112  then combines the two set of partial gradients using equation 22. 
     
       
         
           
             
               
                 
                   
                     ∑ 
                     
                       k 
                       = 
                       1 
                     
                     N 
                   
                   ⁢ 
                   
                     
                       X 
                       
                         
                           ( 
                           k 
                           ) 
                         
                         ′ 
                       
                     
                     ⁡ 
                     
                       ( 
                       
                         
                           
                             X 
                             
                               ( 
                               k 
                               ) 
                             
                           
                           ⁢ 
                           
                               
                           
                           ⁢ 
                           
                             β 
                             
                               ( 
                               r 
                               ) 
                             
                           
                         
                         - 
                         
                           y 
                           
                             ( 
                             k 
                             ) 
                           
                         
                       
                       ) 
                     
                   
                 
               
               
                 
                   ( 
                   
                     equation 
                     ⁢ 
                     
                         
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     21 
                   
                   ) 
                 
               
             
             
               
                 
                   
                     
                       1 
                       δ 
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     
                       
                         
                           X 
                           ˜ 
                         
                         ′ 
                       
                       ⁡ 
                       
                         ( 
                         
                           
                             
                               X 
                               ˜ 
                             
                             ⁢ 
                             
                                 
                             
                             ⁢ 
                             
                               β 
                               
                                 ( 
                                 r 
                                 ) 
                               
                             
                           
                           - 
                           
                             y 
                             ˜ 
                           
                         
                         ) 
                       
                     
                   
                   + 
                   
                     
                       ∑ 
                       
                         k 
                         = 
                         1 
                       
                       N 
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     
                       
                         X 
                         
                           
                             ( 
                             k 
                             ) 
                           
                           ′ 
                         
                       
                       ⁡ 
                       
                         ( 
                         
                           
                             
                               X 
                               
                                 ( 
                                 k 
                                 ) 
                               
                             
                             ⁢ 
                             
                                 
                             
                             ⁢ 
                             
                               β 
                               
                                 ( 
                                 r 
                                 ) 
                               
                             
                           
                           - 
                           
                             y 
                             
                               ( 
                               k 
                               ) 
                             
                           
                         
                         ) 
                       
                     
                   
                 
               
               
                 
                   ( 
                   
                     equation 
                     ⁢ 
                     
                         
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     22 
                   
                   ) 
                 
               
             
           
         
       
     
     The normalized partial gradient corresponding to the coded data for sufficiently large δ can can be approximated (using weak law of large numbers) according to equation 23. 
     
       
         
           
             
               
                 
                   
                     
                       1 
                       δ 
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     
                       
                         
                           X 
                           ˜ 
                         
                         ′ 
                       
                       ⁡ 
                       
                         ( 
                         
                           
                             
                               X 
                               ˜ 
                             
                             ⁢ 
                             
                                 
                             
                             ⁢ 
                             
                               β 
                               
                                 ( 
                                 r 
                                 ) 
                               
                             
                           
                           - 
                           
                             y 
                             ˜ 
                           
                         
                         ) 
                       
                     
                   
                   = 
                   
                     
                       
                         
                           X 
                           ′ 
                         
                         ⁢ 
                         
                           
                             W 
                             ′ 
                           
                           ⁡ 
                           
                             ( 
                             
                               
                                 1 
                                 δ 
                               
                               ⁢ 
                               
                                 G 
                                 ′ 
                               
                               ⁢ 
                               G 
                             
                             ) 
                           
                         
                         ⁢ 
                         
                           W 
                           ⁡ 
                           
                             ( 
                             
                               
                                 X 
                                 ⁢ 
                                 
                                   β 
                                   
                                     ( 
                                     r 
                                     ) 
                                   
                                 
                               
                               - 
                               y 
                             
                             ) 
                           
                         
                       
                       ≈ 
                       
                         
                           X 
                           ′ 
                         
                         ⁢ 
                         
                           W 
                           ′ 
                         
                         ⁢ 
                         
                           W 
                           ⁡ 
                           
                             ( 
                             
                               
                                 X 
                                 ⁢ 
                                 
                                   β 
                                   
                                     ( 
                                     r 
                                     ) 
                                   
                                 
                               
                               - 
                               y 
                             
                             ) 
                           
                         
                       
                     
                     = 
                     
                       
                         ∑ 
                         
                           i 
                           = 
                           1 
                         
                         n 
                       
                       ⁢ 
                       
                         
                           ∑ 
                           
                             k 
                             = 
                             1 
                           
                           
                             l 
                             i 
                             initial 
                           
                         
                         ⁢ 
                         
                           
                             w 
                             
                               i 
                               ⁢ 
                               k 
                             
                             2 
                           
                           ⁢ 
                           
                             
                               X 
                               k 
                               
                                 
                                   ( 
                                   i 
                                   ) 
                                 
                                 ′ 
                               
                             
                             ⁡ 
                             
                               ( 
                               
                                 
                                   
                                     X 
                                     k 
                                     
                                       ( 
                                       i 
                                       ) 
                                     
                                   
                                   ⁢ 
                                   
                                       
                                   
                                   ⁢ 
                                   
                                     β 
                                     
                                       ( 
                                       r 
                                       ) 
                                     
                                   
                                 
                                 - 
                                 
                                   y 
                                   k 
                                   
                                     ( 
                                     i 
                                     ) 
                                   
                                 
                               
                               ) 
                             
                           
                         
                       
                     
                   
                 
               
               
                 
                   ( 
                   
                     equation 
                     ⁢ 
                     
                         
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     23 
                   
                   ) 
                 
               
             
           
         
       
     
     The above relation shows that for sufficiently large δ, the aggregate gradient from the coded data points probabilistically weighs (e.g., equation 12) that provides the full gradient over the entire distributed dataset. Incorporating the partial gradients computed over the uncoded training data by the edge compute nodes  2101  along with the partial gradients computed over coded training data by the master node  2112  as presented in equation 22 can effectively be viewed as using a systematic code to encode the entire set of data, where the generator matrix is 
     
       
         
           
             
               [ 
               
                 
                   
                     I 
                   
                 
                 
                   
                     
                       G 
                       ⁢ 
                       W 
                     
                   
                 
               
               ] 
             
             , 
           
         
       
     
     and performing full gradient computation on the entire coded set. The probabilistic weighing of the parity portion of the training data (e.g., δ) compensates for the probability of systematic portion of the data being unavailable at the master node  2112  by time t* in each epoch. Due to the operational parameters (e.g., link delay and computing delay), each partial gradient computed from the uncoded dataset is available at time t* only with probability (1−w lk   2 ). Therefore, the weight matrix ensures, on average, that the aggregated gradients converges to the full gradient of uncoded data. Further, there is zero decoding complexity when combining the partial gradients. 
     A simulation was performed for the second embodiment, which included a simulation of a heterogeneous computing environment with 24 edge compute nodes  2101  and one master node  2112 . The simulation used an LTE network, where each edge compute node  2101  was assigned  3  resource blocks, and the uplink and downlink channels had similar link/channel quality statistics. Furthermore, the link capacities (normalized) were generated using {1, kFac1, kFac1 2 , . . . , kFac1 23 } and a random permutation of the link capacities was assigned to the edge compute nodes  2101 . Similarly, the processing capabilities/constraints (normalized) for the edge compute nodes  2101  were generated using {1, kFac2, kFac2 2 , . . . , kFac2 23 }. The training dataset included m=7200 data points, with an equal number of points present at each edge compute node  2101 , and the dimension of the model was d=500. Moreover, the maximum coded load that the master node  2112  was willing to process was c up =1800. The training dataset was generated using the standard method, y=Xβ true +n, where X and n are sampled from a standard normal distribution. 
     The results of the simulation compared the performance of the distributed ML scheme of the second embodiment with an uncoded scheme, where (kFac1, kFac2)=(0.9,0.9). The results of the simulation included a comparison of a least squares (LS) estimate of the true (uncoded) model, an uncoded error curve for the uncoded scheme, and a coded error curve of the distributed ML scheme of the second embodiment. Although the error in estimation of the true model β is larger in comparison to the uncoded scheme, the overall time for convergence is much less than the uncoded scheme. 
     The results of the simulation also included comparing the ratio of the mean convergence times for the distributed ML scheme of the second embodiment and the uncoded scheme for different realizations of (kfac1, kfac2), where the stopping criterion for convergence of equation 24 was used: 
     
       
         
           
             
               
                 
                   
                     
                       
                          
                         
                           
                             β 
                             
                               r 
                               + 
                               1 
                             
                           
                           - 
                           
                             β 
                             r 
                           
                         
                          
                       
                       2 
                     
                     
                       
                          
                         
                           β 
                           r 
                         
                          
                       
                       2 
                     
                   
                   &lt; 
                   
                     1 
                     ⁢ 
                     
                       0 
                       
                         - 
                         6 
                       
                     
                   
                 
               
               
                 
                   ( 
                   
                     equation 
                     ⁢ 
                     
                         
                     
                     ⁢ 
                     24 
                   
                   ) 
                 
               
             
           
         
       
     
     The simulation results show that the distributed ML scheme of the second embodiment has a superior performance in comparison to the uncoded scheme for all heterogeneity levels. 
     2. Example Framework, Device, and Infrastructure Implementations 
       FIG. 6  illustrates an example multi-access edge framework  600  in accordance with various embodiments. The multi-access edge framework  600  is an example structure of a MEC environment. MEC enables implementation of multi-access edge applications (ME apps)  636  as software-only entities that run on top of a Virtualization Infrastructure (VI)  638 , which is located in or close to the network edge. The MEC framework  600  shows the general entities involved, and these entities can be grouped into system level  602 , host level  601 , and network level  603  entities. 
     The multi-access edge system level  602  includes multi-access edge system level management  402 , UE  101  (which may be the same or similar to the other UEs or terminals discussed herein), and 3 rd  Party (3P) entities  610 . The network level  603  includes various external network level entities, such as a 3GPP network  640 , a local area network  641  (e.g., a LAN, WLAN, PAN, etc.), and an external network  642  (e.g., network  150 ). The multi-access edge host level  601  includes multi-access edge host level management  601   x  and MEC server  201 . The multi-access edge host level management  601   x  may include various components that handle the management of the multi-access edge specific functionality of a particular MEP  637 , MEC server  201 , and the MEAs  636  to be run. The MEC server  201  includes the MEP  637 , MEAs  636 , and VI  638 . These entities are discussed in more detail with regards to  FIG. 7 . 
       FIG. 7  illustrates an example multi-access edge system architecture  700  (or a mobile edge system architecture) in accordance with various embodiments. The MEC system  700  of  FIG. 7  is a first embodiment of a system architecture of the MEC system  200  discussed previously. The MEC system  700  includes the multi-access edge host level  601  and the multi-access edge system level  602 . The multi-access edge host level  601  includes MEC servers  201  and multi-access edge (ME) management (mgmt)  630 , which provide functionality to run multi-access edge applications (MEAs)  636  within an operator network or a subset of an operator network. 
     The multi-access edge system  200  includes three groups of reference points, including “Mp” reference points regarding the multi-access edge platform functionality; “Mm” reference points, which are management reference points; and “Mx” reference points, which connect MEC entities to external entities. The interfaces/reference points in the MEC system  200  may include internet protocol (IP) based connections, and may be used to provide Representational State Transfer (REST or RESTful) services, and the messages conveyed using the reference points/interfaces may be in XML, HTML, JSON, or some other desired format, such as those discussed herein. A suitable Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting (AAA) protocol, such as the radius or diameter protocols, may also be used for communicating over the reference points/interfaces in other embodiments. 
     The MEC host  201  is an entity that contains an MEP  637  and VI  638  which provides compute, storage, and network resources for the purpose of running MEAs  636 . The VI  638  includes a data plane (DP)  738  that executes the traffic rules (TR)  737   b  received by the MEP  637 , and routes the traffic among applications (e.g., MEAs  636 ), ME services (MESs)  737   a , DNS server/proxy (see e.g., via DNS handling entity  737   c ), 3GPP network  640 , local networks  641 , and external networks  642  (see e.g.,  FIG. 6 ). The MEC DP  738   a  may be connected with the (R)AN nodes  111  and CN  120  of  FIG. 1  over interfaces  114 / 115 , and/or may be connected with the AP  106  of  FIG. 1  via a wider network  150 , such as the internet, an enterprise network, or the like. The other entities depicted by  FIG. 2  may be the same or similar as those discussed with regard to  FIGS. 6-7 . 
     The MEP  637  within the MEC server  201  may be a collection of essential functionality required to run MEAs  636  on a particular VI  638  and enable them to provide and consume MESs  737   a . The MEP  637  can also provide various services and/or functions, such as offering an environment where the MEAs  636  can discover, advertise, consume and offer MESs  737   a  (discussed infra), including MESs  737   a  available via other platforms when supported. The MEP  637  may be able to allow authorized MEAs  636  to communicate with 3P  310  servers located in external networks. The MEP  637  may receive traffic rules from the multi-access edge platform manager (MEPM)  731 , applications, or services, and instruct the data plane accordingly (see e.g., Traffic Rules Control  737   b ). The MEP  637  may send instructions to the DP  738  within the VI  638  via the Mp 2  reference point. The Mp 2  reference point between the MEP  637  and the DP  738  of the VI  638  may be used to instruct the DP  738  on how to route traffic among applications, networks, services, etc. In some implementations, the MEP  637  may translate tokens representing UEs XP 01  in the traffic rules into specific internet protocol (IP) addresses. The MEP  637  also receives DNS records from the MEPM  731  and configures a DNS proxy/server accordingly. The MEP  637  hosts MESs  737   a  including the multi-access edge services discussed infra, and provide access to persistent storage and time of day information. Furthermore, the MEP  637  may communicate with other MEPs  637  of other MEC servers  201  via the Mp 3  reference point. 
     The VI  638  may represent the totality of all hardware and software components which build up the environment in which MEAs  636  and/or MEP  637  are deployed, managed and executed. The VI  638  may span across several locations, and the network providing connectivity between these locations is regarded to be part of the VI  638 . The physical hardware resources of the VI  638  includes computing, storage and network resources that provide processing, storage and connectivity to MEAs  636  and/or MEP  637  through a virtualization layer (e.g., a hypervisor, virtual machine monitor (VMM), or the like). The virtualization layer may abstract and/or logically partition the physical hardware resources of the MEC server  201  as a hardware abstraction layer. The virtualization layer may also enable the software that implements the MEAs  636  and/or MEP  637  to use the underlying VI  638 , and may provide virtualized resources to the MEAs  636  and/or MEP  637 , so that the MEAs  636  and/or MEP  637  can be executed. 
     The MEAs  636  may be applications that can be instantiated on a MEC server  201  within the MEC system  200  and can potentially provide or consume MESs  737   a . MEAs  636  may run as virtual machines (VM) on top of the VI  638  provided by the MEC server  201 , and can interact with the MEP  637  to consume and provide the MESs  737   a . The MEAs  636  are instantiated on the VI  638  of the MEC server  201  based on configuration or requests validated by the ME management  730 . In some embodiments, the MEAs  636  can also interact with the MEP  637  to perform certain support procedures related to the lifecycle of the MEAs  636 , such as indicating availability, preparing relocation of user state, etc. The MEAs  636  may have a certain number of rules and requirements associated to them, such as required resources, maximum latency, required or useful services, etc. These requirements may be validated by the multi-access edge system level management  330 , and can be assigned to default values if missing. MESs  737   a  may be services provided and consumed either by the MEP  637  or MEAs  636 . When provided by an application, an MES  737   a  can be registered in a list of services  737   d  to the MEP  637  over the Mp 1  reference point. Additionally, the MEAs  636  can subscribe to one or more services  737   a  for which it is authorized over the Mp 1  reference point. 
     The MEC system  200  may support a feature called UserApps. When the MEC system  200  supports the feature UserApps, the multi-access edge management may support the instantiation of MEAs  636  on multiple MEC servers  201  following a single instantiation request, and when required by the operator in response to a request by the user. The application instance may need to fulfil a number of potential constraints predefined for the application. Once instantiated, connectivity may be established between the UE  101  and the application instance. Potential constraints may include latency, location, compute resources, storage resources, network capability, security conditions, and the like. 
     When the MEC system  200  supports the feature UserApps, the system  700  may, in response to a request by a user, support the establishment of connectivity between a UE  101  and an instance of a specific MEA  636  fulfilling the requirements of the MEA  636  regarding the UE  101 . If no instance of the MEA  636  fulfilling these requirements is currently running, the multi-access edge system management may create a new instance of the application on a multi-access edge host  200  that fulfils the requirements of the application. Once instantiated, connectivity shall be established between the UE  101  and the new MEA  636  instance. Requirements of the application can include latency, location, compute resources, storage resources, network capability, security conditions, and the like. When the MEC system  200  supports the feature UserApps, the system  400  may support the on-boarding of MEAs  636  during the execution of an instantiation request, may allow the establishment of connectivity between a UE  101  and a specific instance of an MEA  636 , may support the capability to terminate the MEA  636  instance when no UE  101  is connected to it anymore, and may support the termination of the MEA  636  running on multiple MEC servers  201  following a single termination request. 
     As shown by  FIG. 7 , the Mp 1  reference point is between the MEP  637  and the MEAs  636 . The Mp 1  reference point may provide service registration  737   d , service discovery, and communication support for various services, such as the MESs  737   a . In addition, the Mp 1  interface may provide application availability, session state relocation support procedures, traffic rules and DNS rules activation, access to persistent storage and time of day information, and/or the like. The Mp 1  reference point may be used for consuming and providing service specific functionality. 
     Examples of MESs  737   a  include Radio Network Information Service (RNIS), location services, and bandwidth management services. The RNIS, when available, provides authorized MEAs  636  with radio network related information, and expose appropriate up-to-date radio network information to the MEAs  636 . The radio network information (RNI) may include, inter alia, radio network conditions, measurement and statistics information related to the user plane, information related to UEs served by the radio node(s) associated with the multi-access edge host (e.g., UE  101  context and radio access bearers), changes on information related to UEs served by the radio node(s) associated with the multi-access edge host, and/or the like. The RNI may be provided at the relevant granularity (e.g., per UE, per cell, per period of time). 
     The service consumers (e.g., MEAs  636  and MEP  637 ) may communicate with the RNIS over an RNI Application Programming Interface (API) to obtain contextual information from a corresponding radio access network, such as RAN  110  in  FIG. 1 . RNI may be provided to the service consumers via an access node (e.g., (R)AN nodes  111  or AP  106 ). The RNI API may support both query and subscription (e.g., a pub/sub) based mechanisms that are used over a Representational State Transfer (RESTful) API or over a message broker of the MEP  637  (not shown by  FIG. 6 or 7 ). A MEA  636  may query information on a message broker via a transport information query procedure, wherein the transport information may be pre-provisioned to the MEA  636  via a suitable configuration mechanism. The various messages communicated via the RNI API may be in XML, JSON, Protobuf, or some other suitable format. 
     The RNI may be used by MEAs  636  and MEP  637  to optimize the existing services and to provide new types of services that are based on up to date information on radio conditions. As an example, a MEA  636  may use RNI to optimize current services such as video throughput guidance. In throughput guidance, a radio analytics MEA  636  may use MEC services to provide a backend video server (e.g., server(s)  130 ) with a near real-time indication on the throughput estimated to be available at the radio downlink interface in a next time instant. The throughput guidance radio analytics application  336  computes throughput guidance based on the required radio network information it obtains from a multi-access edge service running on the MEC server  201 . RNI may be also used by the MEP  637  to optimize the mobility procedures required to support service continuity, such as when a certain MEA  636  requests a single piece of information using a simple request-response model (e.g., using RESTful mechanisms) while other MEAs  636  subscribe to multiple different notifications regarding information changes (e.g., using a pub/sub mechanism and/or message broker mechanisms). 
     In various embodiments, a MEC server  201  acting as a master node for distributed ML (e.g., the MEC server  201  in the example of  FIG. 1 ) may access RNI of individual edge compute nodes  101 ,  201  via a MEA  636  and/or the MEP  637  using the RNI API for the purposes of evaluating the channel conditions and/or link quality for partitioning training datasets and/or for assigning computational tasks to the individual edge compute nodes  101 ,  201 . In an example, an application implemented by a MEC entity (e.g., the MEC-O  721 ) may access RNI via a MEA  636  or the MEP  637  using the RNI API, which may be used to select a MEC server  201  to act as the master node for the distributed ML. 
     The location services (LS), when available, may provide authorized MEAs  636  with location-related information, and expose such information to the MEAs  636 . With location related information, the MEP  637  or one or more MEAs  636  perform active device location tracking, location-based service recommendations, and/or other like services. The LS supports the location retrieval mechanism, i.e. the location is reported only once for each location information request. The LS supports a location subscribe mechanism, for example, the location is able to be reported multiple times for each location request, periodically or based on specific events, such as location change. The location information may include, inter alia, the location of specific UEs  101  currently served by the radio node(s) associated with the MEC server  201 , information about the location of all UEs  101  currently served by the radio node(s) associated with the MEC server  201 , information about the location of a certain category of UEs  101  currently served by the radio node(s) associated with the MEC server  201 , a list of UEs  101  in a particular location, information about the location of all radio nodes currently associated with the MEC server  201 , and/or the like. The location information may be in the form of a geolocation, a Global Navigation Satellite Service (GNSS) coordinate, a Cell identity (ID), and/or the like. The LS is accessible through the API defined in the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) specification “RESTful Network API for Zonal Presence” OMA-TS-REST-NetAPI-ZonalPresence-V1-0-20160308-C. The Zonal Presence service utilizes the concept of “zone”, where a zone lends itself to be used to group all radio nodes that are associated to a MEC host or MEC server  201 , or a subset thereof, according to a desired deployment. In this regard, the OMA Zonal Presence API provides means for MEAs  636  to retrieve information about a zone, the access points associated to the zones and the users that are connected to the access points. In addition, the OMA Zonal Presence API, allows authorized application to subscribe to a notification mechanism, reporting about user activities within a zone. In various embodiments, a MEC server  201  acting as a master node for distributed ML (e.g., the MEC server  201  in the example of  FIG. 1 ) may access location information or zonal presence information of individual edge compute nodes  101  using the OMA Zonal Presence API to identify the relative location or positions of the edge compute nodes  101 . The location or zonal presence information may be used as a basis for selecting individual edge compute nodes  101  for offloading ML tasks, partitioning training data, specifying encoding criteria, or for determining other aspects of the embodiments discussed herein. 
     The bandwidth management services (BWMS) provides for the allocation of bandwidth to certain traffic routed to and from MEAs  636 , and specify static/dynamic up/down bandwidth resources, including bandwidth size and bandwidth priority. MEAs  636  may use the BWMS to update/receive bandwidth information to/from the MEP  637 . In some embodiments, different MEAs  636  running in parallel on the same MEC server  201  may be allocated specific static, dynamic up/down bandwidth resources, including bandwidth size and bandwidth priority. The BWMS includes a bandwidth management (BWM) API to allowed registered applications to statically and/or dynamically register for specific bandwidth allocations per session/application. The BWM API includes HTTP protocol bindings for BWM functionality using RESTful services or some other suitable API mechanism. 
     Referring back to  FIG. 7 , multi-access edge management comprises multi-access edge system level management and the multi-access edge host level management  330 . The multi-access edge host level management  330  comprises the MEPM  731  and the VI manager (VIM)  702 , and handles the management of the multi-access edge specific functionality of a particular MEC server  201  and the applications running on it. In some implementations, some or all of the multi-access edge management components may be implemented by one or more servers located in one or more data centers, and may use virtualization infrastructure that is connected with Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) infrastructure used to virtualize core network elements, or using the same hardware as the NFV infrastructure. An example NFV infrastructure is shown by  FIG. 8 . 
     The MEPM  731  is responsible for managing the life cycle of applications including informing the multi-access edge orchestrator (MEC-O)  721  of relevant application related events. The MEPM  731  may also provide MEP element management functions (MEPE mgmt  731   a ) to the MEP  637 , manage MEA rules and requirements (MERR mgmt  731   b ) including service authorizations, traffic rules, DNS configuration and resolving conflicts, and manage MEA  636  lifecycles (MEALC mgmt  731 ). The multi-access edge platform manager  731  may also receive virtualized resources fault reports and performance measurements from the VIM  702  for further processing. The Mm 5  reference point between the multi-access edge platform manager  731  and the MEP  637  is used to perform platform configuration, configuration of the MEPE mgmt  731   a , the MERR mgmt  731   b , the MEALC mgmt  731 , management of application relocation, etc. 
     The VIM  702  may be an entity that allocates, manages and releases virtualized (compute, storage and networking) resources of the VI  638 , and prepares the VI  638  to run a software image. To do so, the VIM  702  may communicate with the VI  638  over the Mm 7  reference point between the VIM  702  and the VI  638 . Preparing the VI  638  may include configuring the VI  638 , and receiving/storing the software image. When supported, the VIM  702  may provide rapid provisioning of applications, such as described in “Openstack++ for Cloudlet Deployments”, available at http://reports-archive.adm.cs.cmu.edu/anon/2015/CMU-CS-15-123.pdf. The VIM  702  may also collect and report performance and fault information about the virtualized resources, and perform application relocation when supported. For application relocation from/to external cloud environments, the VIM  702  may interact with an external cloud manager to perform the application relocation, for example using the mechanism described in “Adaptive VM Handoff Across Cloudlets”, and/or possibly through a proxy. Furthermore, the VIM  702  may communicate with the multi-access edge platform manager  731  via the Mm 6  reference point, which may be used to manage virtualized resources, for example, to realize the application lifecycle management. Moreover, the VIM  702  may communicate with the MEC-O  721  via the Mm 4  reference point, which may be used to manage virtualized resources of the MEC server  201 , and to manage application images. Managing the virtualized resources may include tracking available resource capacity, etc. 
     The multi-access edge system level management includes the MEC-O  721  as a core component, which has an overview of the complete MEC system  200 . The MEC-O  721  may maintain an overall view of the MEC system  200  based on deployed multi-access edge hosts  200 , available resources, available MESs  737   a , and topology. The Mm 3  reference point between the MEC-O  721  and the multi-access edge platform manager  330  may be used for the management of the application lifecycle, application rules and requirements and keeping track of available MESs  737   a . The MEC-O  721  may communicate with the user application lifecycle management proxy (UALMP)  725  via the Mm 9  reference point in order to manage MEAs  636  requested by UE application  705 . 
     The MEC-O  721  may also be responsible for on-boarding of application packages, including checking the integrity and authenticity of the packages, validating application rules and requirements and if necessary adjusting them to comply with operator policies, keeping a record of on-boarded packages, and preparing the VIM(s)  702  to handle the applications. The MEC-O  721  may select appropriate MEC host(s)  200  for application instantiation based on constraints, such as latency, available resources, and available services. The MEC-O  721  may also trigger application instantiation and termination, as well as trigger application relocation as needed and when supported. 
     The Operations Support System (OSS)  722  refers to the OSS of an operator that receives requests via the Customer Facing Service (CFS) portal  706  (and over the Mx1 reference point) and from UE applications  705  for instantiation or termination of MEAs  636 , and decides on the granting of these requests. The CFS portal  706  (and the Mx1 interface) may be used by third-parties to request the MEC system  200  to run applications  706  in the MEC system  200 . Granted requests may be forwarded to the MEC-O  721  for further processing. When supported, the OSS  722  also receives requests from UE applications  705  for relocating applications between external clouds and the MEC system  200 . The Mm 2  reference point between the OSS  722  and the multi-access edge platform manager  330  is used for the multi-access edge platform  330  configuration, fault and performance management. The Mm 1  reference point between the MEC-O  721  and the OSS  722  is used for triggering the instantiation and the termination of multi-access edge applications  336  in the MEC system  200 . 
     The user application lifecycle management proxy (“user app LCM proxy”)  725  may authorize requests from UE applications  705  in the UE  101  and interacts with the OSS  722  and the MEC-O  721  for further processing of these requests. The user app LCM proxy  725  may interact with the OSS  722  via the Mm 8  reference point, and is used to handle UE applications  705  requests for running applications in the MEC system  200 . A user application  705  may be an ME app  336  that is instantiated in the MEC system  200  in response to a request of a user via an application running in the UE  101  (e.g., UE application  705 ). The user app LCM proxy  725  allows UE applications  705  to request on-boarding, instantiation, termination of user applications and when supported, relocation of user applications in and out of the MEC system  200 . It also allows informing the UE applications  705  about the state of the user applications  705 . The user app LCM proxy  725  is only accessible from within the mobile network, and may only be available when supported by the MEC system  200 . A UE application  705  may use the Mx2 reference point between the user app LCM proxy  725  and the UE application  705  to request the MEC system  200  to run an application in the MEC system  200 , or to move an application in or out of the MEC system  200 . The Mx2 reference point may only be accessible within the mobile network and may only be available when supported by the multi-access edge system. 
     In order to run an MEA  636  in the MEC system  700 , the MEC-O  721  receives requests triggered by the OSS  722 , a third-party  310 , or a UE application  705 . In response to receipt of such requests, the MEC-O  721  selects a MEC server  201  to host the MEA  636  for computational offloading. These requests may include information about the application to be run, and possibly other information, such as the location where the application needs to be active, other application rules and requirements, as well as the location of the application image if it is not yet on-boarded in the MEC system  700 . 
     In various embodiments, the MEC-O  721  selects one or more MEC servers  201  for computational intensive tasks of an ML model β, such as the code redundancy, load partitioning, and gradient computations discussed previously. The selected one or more MEC servers  201  may offload computational tasks of the ML model β (e.g., which may be considered UE application  705 ) based on various operational parameters, such as network capabilities and conditions, computational capabilities and conditions, application requirements, and/or other like operational parameters, such as those discussed herein. The application requirements may be rules and requirements associated to/with one or more MEAs  636 , such as deployment model of the application (e.g., whether it is one instance per user, one instance per host, one instance on each host, etc.); required virtualized resources (e.g., compute, storage, network resources, including specific hardware support); latency requirements (e.g., maximum latency, how strict the latency constraints are, latency fairness between users); requirements on location; multi-access edge services that are required and/or useful for the MEAs  636  to be able to run; multi-access edge services that the MEAs  636  can take advantage of, if available; connectivity or mobility support/requirements (e.g., application state relocation, application instance relocation); required multi-access edge features, such as VM relocation support or UE identity; required network connectivity (e.g., connectivity to applications within the multi-access edge system, connectivity to local networks, or to the Internet); information on the operator&#39;s multi-access edge system deployment or mobile network deployment (e.g., topology, cost); requirements on access to user traffic; requirements on persistent storage; traffic rules; DNS rules, etc. 
     The MEC-O  721  considers the requirements and information listed above and information on the resources currently available in the MEC system  200  to select one or several MEC servers  201  within the MEC system  200  to host MEAs  636  and/or for computational offloading. After one or more MEC servers  201  are selected, the MEC-O  721  requests the selected MEC host(s)  200  to instantiate the application(s) or application tasks, such as tasks of the ML model β. The actual algorithm used to select the MEC servers  201  depends on the implementation, configuration, and/or operator deployment. In various embodiments, the selection algorithm may be based on the task offloading embodiments discussed herein, for example, by taking into account network, computational, and energy consumption requirements for performing tasks of the ML model β (e.g., application tasks) as well as network functionalities, processing, and offloading coding/encodings, or differentiating traffic between various RATs. Under certain circumstances (e.g., UE mobility events resulting in increased latency, load balancing decisions, etc.), and if supported, the MEC-O  721  may decide to select one or more new MEC servers  201  to act as a master node  2112 , and initiates the transfer of an application instance or application-related state information from the one or more source MEC servers  201  to the one or more target MEC servers  201 . 
       FIG. 8  illustrates an example multi-access edge system architecture  800  (or a multi-access edge system architecture) in accordance with various embodiments. MEC system  800  of  FIG. 8  is a second embodiment of a system architecture of the MEC system  200  discussed previously. Like numbered elements in  FIG. 8  are the same as discussed previously with respect to  FIGS. 6-7 . The MEC system  800  includes architectures and infrastructures that are used to virtualize one or more network functions (NFs) onto physical resources comprising a combination of industry-standard server hardware, storage hardware, or switches, or alternatively comprising proprietary hardware. Typically, mobile network operators virtualize their NFs using Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), and use virtualization infrastructure (VI) to consolidate various network elements, which are referred to as Virtualized Network Functions (VNFs). In other words, NFV can be used to execute virtual or reconfigurable implementations of one or more components/functions of a CN  120 . As mentioned previously, the MEC system  200  (or individual MEC servers  201 ) may include VI to consolidate and virtualize various MEC components and MEC applications on top of the VI. In this regard, the system  800  is an architecture where MEC elements are deployed in an NFV environment, which may provide maximum utilization of the underlying VI. In particular, the system  800  is a MEC architecture that is deployed in NFV environments, wherein the MEP  637  is deployed as a VNF, the MEAs  636  appear as VNFs towards the NFV MANO components (MEAs  636  with specific NFV functionality are referred to as an “MEA-VNFs  836 ” or the like), and the VI  638  is deployed as an NFVI  804  and its virtualized resources are managed by a VIM  802 . 
     In addition to elements discussed previously with respect to  FIG. 7 , the system  800  is illustrated as including a virtualized infrastructure manager (VIM)  802 , a network function virtualization infrastructure (NFVI)  804 , a VNF manager (VNFM)  806 , virtualized network functions (VNFs) including, inter alia, MEPVNF  837  and MEA-VNFs  836 , a MEC Edge Platform Manager-NFV (MEPM-V)  810 , and an NFV Orchestrator (NFVO)  812 . In embodiments, the MEP  637  is realized as a VNF (e.g., MEP-VNF  837  in  FIG. 8 ) and is managed according to typical NFV procedures. In these embodiments, the MEPM  731  is transformed into the Multi-access Edge Platform Manager-NFV (MEPM-V)  810 , where the MEPM-V  810  acts as an Element Manager (EM) of the MEP-VNF  837 . The MEPM-V  810  delegates Life Cycle Management (LCM) parts/tasks to one or more VNFM(s)  806 , including VNFM-MEP LCM  806 A and VNFM-MEA LCM  806 B. In particular, the VNFM  806  is used to perform LCM of the MEP-VNF including LCM of the MEP  637  performed by the VNFM-MEP LCM  806 A and LCM of the MEAs  636  performed by the VNFM-MEA LCM  806 B. 
     Additionally, the MEC-O  721  is transformed into a Multi-access Edge Application Orchestrator” (MEAO)  821  that uses the NFVO  812  for resource orchestration, and for orchestration of the set of MEA-VNFs as one or more NFV Network Services (NSs). The MEA-VNFs  836  are managed like individual VNFs, where certain orchestration and Life Cycle Management (LCM) tasks are delegated to the NFVO  812  and VNFM  806   a,b  functional blocks. In some embodiments, the MEP-VNF  837 , the MEPM-V  810 , and VNFM-MEA LCM  806 B may be deployed as a single package or ensemble. In other embodiments, the VNFM-MEP LCM  806 A and VNFM-MEA LCM  806 B are part of a generic VNFM  806 , and the MEP-VNF  837  and the MEPM-V  810  are provided by a single vendor. 
     The VIM  802  manages the resources of the NFVI  804 . The NFVI  804  includes physical or virtual resources and applications (including hypervisors) used to execute the system  800 . The VIM  802  manages the life cycle of virtual resources with the NFVI  804  (e.g., creation, maintenance, and tear down of virtual machines (VMs) associated with one or more physical resources); tracks VM instances; tracks performance, fault, and security of VM instances and associated physical resources; and exposes VM instances and associated physical resources to other management systems. The NFVO  812  coordinates, authorizes, releases, and engages resources of the NFVI  804  in order to provide requested services (e.g., to execute a core network function, component, or slice). 
     The VNFM  806  manages VNFs used to execute core network  120  components/functions. The VNFM  806  manages the life cycle of the VNFs and tracks performance, fault, and security of the virtual aspects of VNFs. The MEPM-V  810  tracks the performance, fault and security of the functional aspects of VNFs. The tracking data from the VNFM  806  and the MEPM-V  810  may comprise, for example, performance measurement (PM) data used by the VIM  802  or the NFVI  804 . Both the VNFM  806  and the MEPM-V  810  can scale up/down the quantity of VNFs of the system  800 . 
     The Mm 3 * reference point between MEAO  821  and the MEPM-V  810  is based on the Mm 3  reference point discussed previously. The Mm 3 * reference point in this embodiment may be altered to account for the split between MEPM-V  810  and VNFM-MEA LCMs  806 B. In addition to the reference points discussed previously with respect to  FIG. 7 , system  800  includes the reference points Mv 1 , Mv 2  and Mv 3  between elements of the MEC architecture and NFV architectures to support the management of MEA-VNFs  836  and respective MEC services  837   a . The Mv 1  reference point connects the MEAO  821  and the NFVO  812  and is the same or similar to the Os-Ma-nfvo reference point in NFV architectures. The Mv 2  reference point connects the VNFM-MEA LCM  806 B with the MEPM-V  810  to allow LCM related notifications to be exchanged between these entities. The Mv 2  reference point is the same or similar to the Ve-Vnfm-em reference point in NFV architectures. The Mv 3  reference point connects the VNFM-MEA LCM  806 B with MEA-VNF  836  instance(s) to allow the exchange of messages related to, for example, MEA LCM or initial deployment-specific configurations. The Mv 3  reference point is the same or similar to the Ve-Vnfm-vnf reference point in NFV architectures. 
     Furthermore, the following reference points are used as they are defined for NFV architectures: The Nf-Vn reference point that connects each MEA-VNF  836  with the NFVI  804 ; the Nf-Vi reference point that connects the NFVI  804  and the VIM  802 ; the Os-Ma-nfvo reference point that connects the OSS  722  and the NFVO  812 , which is primarily used to manage NSs (e.g., a number of VNFs connected and orchestrated to deliver a service); the Or-Vnfm reference point that connects the NFVO  812  and the VNFM  806   a,b , which is primarily used for the NFVO  812  to invoke VNF LCM operations; the Vi-Vnfm reference point that connects the VIM  802  and the VNFM  806   a,b , which is primarily used by the VNFM  806   a,b  to invoke resource management operations to manage cloud resources that are needed by the VNF  837  and/or data plane (DP)-VNF  838  (where Vi-Vnfm reference point corresponds to the Mm 6  reference point discussed previously); the Or-Vi reference point that connects the NFVO  812  and the VIM  802 , which is primarily used by the NFVO  812  to manage cloud resources capacity; the Ve-Vnfm-em reference point that connects the VNFM  806   a,b  that manages the lifecycle of the MEP  637  with the MEPM-V  810 ; the Ve-Vnfm-vnf reference point that connects the VNFM  806   a,b  that manages the lifecycle of the MEP  637  with the MEP-VNF  837 ; the Nf-Vn reference point that connects the MEP-VNF  837  and the NFVI  804 ; the Nf-Vi reference point that connects the NFVI  804  and the VIM  802 ; the Os-Ma-nfvo reference point that connects the OSS  722  and the NFVO  812 , which is primarily used to manage NSs, for example, a number of VNFs connected and orchestrated to deliver a service; the Or-Vnfm reference point that connects the NFVO  812  and the VNFM  806   a,b  that manages the lifecycle of the ME platform, which is primarily used for the NFVO  812  to invoke VNF LCM operations; the Vi-Vnfm reference point that connects the VIM  802  and the VNFM  806   a,b  that manages the lifecycle of the MEP  637 , which is primarily used by the VNFM  806   a,b  to invoke resource management operations to manage the cloud resources that are needed by the VNF; and the Or-Vi reference point that connects the NFVO  812  and the VIM  802 . It is primarily used by the NFVO  812  to manage cloud resources capacity. 
     When MEC is deployed in a NFV environment, the data plane (DP)  838  may be implemented as a Physical Network Function (PNF) (e.g., as DP-PNF  838 ), a VNF (e.g., as DP-VNF  838 ), or combination thereof. When implemented as a DP-PNF  838 , the DP is connected to the NS that contains the MEA-VNFs  836 , and the Mp 2  reference point is kept as a MEC-internal reference point also in the NFV-based deployment of MEC. In another embodiment, for performance enhancements, the Service Function Chaining (SFC) functionality provided by the underlying NFVI  804  may be reused for traffic routing. In such a deployment, the DP  838  and the Mp 2  reference point are omitted from the system  800 . The SFC functionality in the NFVI  804  is configured by the NFVO  812  in the VIM  802  based on the NFP of the NFV NS, using the Or-Vi reference point. In these embodiments, the MEAO  821  translates the traffic rules into an NFP and sends it to the NFVO  812 . The MEP  837  may not control the traffic redirection directly via the Mp 2  reference point, but instead may pass requests to activate/deactivate/update traffic rules to the MEPM-V  810 , which will then be forwarded to the MEAO  821 . When receiving such a request, the MEAO  821  may request the NFVO  812  to update the NFP accordingly. Furthermore, although not shown by  FIG. 8 , the system  800  may also include a network manager (NM). The NM may provide a package of end-user functions with the responsibility for the management of a network, which may include network elements with VNFs, non-virtualized network functions, or both (e.g., management of the VNFs may occur via the MEPM-V  810 ). 
       FIG. 9  illustrates an example of infrastructure equipment  900  in accordance with various embodiments. The infrastructure equipment  900  (or “system  900 ”) may be implemented as a base station, radio head, access network node (e.g., the (R)AN nodes  111  and/or AP  106  shown and described previously), MEC servers  201 , server(s)  130 , and/or any other element/device discussed herein. In other examples, the system  900  could be implemented in or by a UE. 
     The system  900  includes application circuitry  905 , baseband circuitry  910 , one or more radio front end modules (RFEMs)  915 , memory circuitry  920 , power management integrated circuitry (PMIC)  925 , power tee circuitry  930 , network controller circuitry  935 , network interface connector  940 , positioning circuitry  945 , and user interface  950 . In some embodiments, the device  900  may include additional elements such as, for example, memory/storage, display, camera, sensor, or input/output (I/O) interface. In other embodiments, the components described below may be included in more than one device. For example, said circuitries may be separately included in more than one device for CRAN, vBBU, or other like implementations. 
     Application circuitry  905  includes circuitry such as, but not limited to one or more processors (or processor cores), cache memory, and one or more of low drop-out voltage regulators (LDOs), interrupt controllers, serial interfaces such as SPI, I2C or universal programmable serial interface module, real time clock (RTC), timer-counters including interval and watchdog timers, general purpose input/output (I/O or IO), memory card controllers such as Secure Digital (SD) MultiMediaCard (MMC) or similar, Universal Serial Bus (USB) interfaces, Mobile Industry Processor Interface (MIPI) interfaces and Joint Test Access Group (JTAG) test access ports. The processors (or cores) of the application circuitry  905  may be coupled with or may include memory/storage elements and may be configured to execute instructions stored in the memory/storage to enable various applications or operating systems to run on the system  900 . In some implementations, the memory/storage elements may be on-chip memory circuitry, which may include any suitable volatile and/or non-volatile memory, such as DRAM, SRAM, EPROM, EEPROM, Flash memory, solid-state memory, and/or any other type of memory device technology, such as those discussed herein. 
     The processor(s) of application circuitry  905  may include, for example, one or more processor cores (CPUs), one or more application processors, one or more graphics processing units (GPUs), one or more reduced instruction set computing (RISC) processors, one or more Acorn RISC Machine (ARM) processors, one or more complex instruction set computing (CISC) processors, one or more digital signal processors (DSP), one or more FPGAs, one or more PLDs, one or more ASICs, one or more microprocessors or controllers, or any suitable combination thereof. In some embodiments, the application circuitry  905  may comprise, or may be, a special-purpose processor/controller to operate according to the various embodiments herein. As examples, the processor(s) of application circuitry  905  may include one or more Intel Pentium®, Core®, or Xeon® processor(s); Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Ryzen® processor(s), Accelerated Processing Units (APUs), or Epyc® processors; ARM-based processor(s) licensed from ARM Holdings, Ltd. such as the ARM Cortex-A family of processors and the ThunderX2® provided by Cavium™, Inc.; a MIPS-based design from MIPS Technologies, Inc. such as MIPS Warrior P-class processors; and/or the like. In some embodiments, the system  900  may not utilize application circuitry  905 , and instead may include a special-purpose processor/controller to process IP data received from an EPC or 5GC, for example. 
     In some implementations, the application circuitry  905  may include one or more hardware accelerators, which may be microprocessors, programmable processing devices, or the like. The one or more hardware accelerators may include, for example, computer vision (CV) and/or deep learning (DL) accelerators. As examples, the programmable processing devices may be one or more a field-programmable devices (FPDs) such as field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and the like; programmable logic devices (PLDs) such as complex PLDs (CPLDs), high-capacity PLDs (HCPLDs), and the like; ASICs such as structured ASICs and the like; programmable SoCs (PSoCs); and the like. In such implementations, the circuitry of application circuitry  905  may comprise logic blocks or logic fabric, and other interconnected resources that may be programmed to perform various functions, such as the procedures, methods, functions, etc. of the various embodiments discussed herein. In such embodiments, the circuitry of application circuitry  905  may include memory cells (e.g., erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM), electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM), flash memory, static memory (e.g., static random access memory (SRAM), anti-fuses, etc.)) used to store logic blocks, logic fabric, data, etc. in look-up-tables (LUTs) and the like. 
     In some implementations, such as implementations where subsystems of the edge compute nodes  2101  and/or master node  2112  of  FIGS. 2-5  (e.g., load balancing engine  310 , load balancing engine  510 , encoder  533 , or other like subsystems/components) are individual software agents or AI agents, each agent is implemented in a respective hardware accelerator that are configured with appropriate bit stream(s) or logic blocks to perform their respective functions. In these implementations, processor(s) and/or hardware accelerators of the application circuitry  905  may be specifically tailored for operating the agents and/or for machine learning functionality, such as a cluster of AI GPUs, tensor processing units (TPUs) developed by Google® Inc., a Real AI Processors (RAPs™) provided by AlphaICs®, Nervana™ Neural Network Processors (NNPs) provided by Intel® Corp., Intel® Movidius™ Myriad™ X Vision Processing Unit (VPU), NVIDIA® PX™ based GPUs, the NM500 chip provided by General Vision®, Hardware 3 provided by Tesla®, Inc., an Epiphany™ based processor provided by Adapteva®, or the like. In some embodiments, the hardware accelerator may be implemented as an AI accelerating co-processor, such as the Hexagon 685 DSP provided by Qualcomm®, the PowerVR 2NX Neural Net Accelerator (NNA) provided by Imagination Technologies Limited®, the Neural Engine core within the Apple® A11 or A12 Bionic SoC, the Neural Processing Unit within the HiSilicon Kirin 970 provided by Huawei®, and/or the like. 
     The baseband circuitry  910  may be implemented, for example, as a solder-down substrate including one or more integrated circuits, a single packaged integrated circuit soldered to a main circuit board or a multi-chip module containing two or more integrated circuits. The baseband circuitry  910  includes one or more processing devices (e.g., baseband processors) to carry out various protocol and radio control functions. Baseband circuitry  910  may interface with application circuitry of system  900  for generation and processing of baseband signals and for controlling operations of the RFEMs  915 . The baseband circuitry  910  may handle various radio control functions that enable communication with one or more radio networks via the RFEMs  915 . The baseband circuitry  910  may include circuitry such as, but not limited to, one or more single-core or multi-core processors (e.g., one or more baseband processors) or control logic to process baseband signals received from a receive signal path of the RFEMs  915 , and to generate baseband signals to be provided to the RFEMs  915  via a transmit signal path. In various embodiments, the baseband circuitry  910  may implement a real-time OS (RTOS) to manage resources of the baseband circuitry  910 , schedule tasks, etc. Examples of the RTOS may include Operating System Embedded (OSE)™ provided by Enea®, Nucleus RTOS™ provided by Mentor Graphics®, Versatile Real-Time Executive (VRTX) provided by Mentor Graphics®, ThreadX™ provided by Express Logic®, FreeRTOS, REX OS provided by Qualcomm®, OKL4 provided by Open Kernel (OK) Labs®, or any other suitable RTOS, such as those discussed herein. 
     Although not shown by  FIG. 9 , in one embodiment, the baseband circuitry  910  includes individual processing device(s) to operate one or more wireless communication protocols (e.g., a “multi-protocol baseband processor” or “protocol processing circuitry”) and individual processing device(s) to implement physical layer (PHY) functions. In this embodiment, the protocol processing circuitry operates or implements various protocol layers/entities of one or more wireless communication protocols. In a first example, the protocol processing circuitry may operate Long Term Evolution (LTE) protocol entities and/or Fifth Generation (5G)/New Radio (NR) protocol entities when the RFEMs  915  are cellular radiofrequency communication system, such as millimeter wave (mmWave) communication circuitry or some other suitable cellular communication circuitry. In the first example, the protocol processing circuitry would operate medium access control (MAC), radio link control (RLC), packet data convergence protocol (PDCP), service data adaptation protocol (SDAP), radio resource control (RRC), and non-access stratum (NAS) functions. In a second example, the protocol processing circuitry may operate one or more IEEE-based protocols when the RFEMs  915  are WiFi communication system. In the second example, the protocol processing circuitry would operate WiFi MAC and logical link control (LLC) functions. The protocol processing circuitry may include one or more memory structures (not shown) to store program code and data for operating the protocol functions, as well as one or more processing cores (not shown) to execute the program code and perform various operations using the data. The protocol processing circuitry provides control functions for the baseband circuitry  910  and/or RFEMs  915 . The baseband circuitry  910  may also support radio communications for more than one wireless protocol. 
     Continuing with the aforementioned embodiment, the baseband circuitry  910  includes individual processing device(s) to implement PHY including hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) functions, scrambling and/or descrambling, (en)coding and/or decoding, layer mapping and/or de-mapping, modulation symbol mapping, received symbol and/or bit metric determination, multi-antenna port pre-coding and/or decoding which may include one or more of space-time, space-frequency or spatial coding, reference signal generation and/or detection, preamble sequence generation and/or decoding, synchronization sequence generation and/or detection, control channel signal blind decoding, radio frequency shifting, and other related functions. etc. The modulation/demodulation functionality may include Fast-Fourier Transform (FFT), precoding, or constellation mapping/demapping functionality. The (en)coding/decoding functionality may include convolution, tail-biting convolution, turbo, Viterbi, or Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) coding. Embodiments of modulation/demodulation and encoder/decoder functionality are not limited to these examples and may include other suitable functionality in other embodiments. 
     User interface circuitry  950  may include one or more user interfaces designed to enable user interaction with the system  900  or peripheral component interfaces designed to enable peripheral component interaction with the system  900 . User interfaces may include, but are not limited to, one or more physical or virtual buttons (e.g., a reset button), one or more indicators (e.g., light emitting diodes (LEDs)), a physical keyboard or keypad, a mouse, a touchpad, a touchscreen, speakers or other audio emitting devices, microphones, a printer, a scanner, a headset, a display screen or display device, etc. Peripheral component interfaces may include, but are not limited to, a nonvolatile memory port, a universal serial bus (USB) port, an audio jack, a power supply interface, etc. 
     The radio front end modules (RFEMs)  915  may comprise a millimeter wave (mmWave) RFEM and one or more sub-mmWave radio frequency integrated circuits (RFICs). In some implementations, the one or more sub-mmWave RFICs may be physically separated from the mmWave RFEM. The RFICs may include connections to one or more antennas or antenna arrays, and the RFEM may be connected to multiple antennas. In alternative implementations, both mmWave and sub-mmWave radio functions may be implemented in the same physical RFEM  915 , which incorporates both mmWave antennas and sub-mmWave. The antenna array comprises one or more antenna elements, each of which is configured convert electrical signals into radio waves to travel through the air and to convert received radio waves into electrical signals. For example, digital baseband signals provided by the baseband circuitry  910  is converted into analog RF signals (e.g., modulated waveform) that will be amplified and transmitted via the antenna elements of the antenna array including one or more antenna elements (not shown). The antenna elements may be omnidirectional, direction, or a combination thereof. The antenna elements may be formed in a multitude of arranges as are known and/or discussed herein. The antenna array may comprise microstrip antennas or printed antennas that are fabricated on the surface of one or more printed circuit boards. The antenna array may be formed in as a patch of metal foil (e.g., a patch antenna) in a variety of shapes, and may be coupled with the RF circuitry using metal transmission lines or the like. 
     The memory circuitry  920  may include one or more of volatile memory including dynamic random access memory (DRAM) and/or synchronous dynamic random access memory (SDRAM), and nonvolatile memory (NVM) including high-speed electrically erasable memory (commonly referred to as Flash memory), phase change random access memory (PRAM), magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM), etc., and may incorporate the three-dimensional (3D) cross-point (XPOINT) memories from Intel® and Micron®. Memory circuitry  920  may be implemented as one or more of solder down packaged integrated circuits, socketed memory modules and plug-in memory cards. The memory circuitry  920  is configured to store computational logic (or “modules”) in the form of software, firmware, or hardware commands to implement the techniques described herein. The computational logic or modules may be developed using a suitable programming language or development tools, such as any programming language or development tool discussed herein. The computational logic may be employed to store working copies and/or permanent copies of programming instructions for the operation of various components of appliance infrastructure equipment  900 , an operating system of infrastructure equipment  900 , one or more applications, and/or for carrying out the embodiments discussed herein (such as one or more operations of depicted by  FIGS. 2-5  and/or the like). The computational logic may be stored or loaded into memory circuitry  920  as instructions for execution by the processors of the application circuitry  905  to provide or perform the functions described herein. The various elements may be implemented by assembler instructions supported by processors of the application circuitry  905  or high-level languages that may be compiled into such instructions. The permanent copy of the programming instructions may be placed into persistent storage devices of memory circuitry  920  in the factory during manufacture, or in the field through, for example, a distribution medium (not shown), through a communication interface (e.g., from a distribution server), and/or over-the-air (OTA). 
     The PMIC  925  may include voltage regulators, surge protectors, power alarm detection circuitry, and one or more backup power sources such as a battery or capacitor. The power alarm detection circuitry may detect one or more of brown out (under-voltage) and surge (over-voltage) conditions. The power tee circuitry  930  may provide for electrical power drawn from a network cable to provide both power supply and data connectivity to the infrastructure equipment  900  using a single cable. 
     The network controller circuitry  935  provides connectivity to a network using a standard network interface protocol such as Ethernet, Ethernet over GRE Tunnels, Ethernet over Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), or some other suitable protocol, such as those discussed herein. Network connectivity may be provided to/from the infrastructure equipment  900  via network interface connector  940  using a physical connection, which may be electrical (commonly referred to as a “copper interconnect”), optical, or wireless. The network controller circuitry  935  may include one or more dedicated processors and/or FPGAs to communicate using one or more of the aforementioned protocols. In some implementations, the network controller circuitry  935  may include multiple controllers to provide connectivity to other networks using the same or different protocols. In various embodiments, the network controller circuitry  935  enables communication with associated equipment and/or with a backend system (e.g., server(s)  130  of  FIG. 1 ), which may take place via a suitable gateway device. 
     The positioning circuitry  945  includes circuitry to receive and decode signals transmitted/broadcasted by a positioning network of a global navigation satellite system (GNSS). Examples of navigation satellite constellations (or GNSS) include United States&#39; Global Positioning System (GPS), Russia&#39;s Global Navigation System (GLONASS), the European Union&#39;s Galileo system, China&#39;s BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, a regional navigation system or GNSS augmentation system (e.g., Navigation with Indian Constellation (NAVIC), Japan&#39;s Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS), France&#39;s Doppler Orbitography and Radio-positioning Integrated by Satellite (DORIS), etc.), or the like. The positioning circuitry  945  comprises various hardware elements (e.g., including hardware devices such as switches, filters, amplifiers, antenna elements, and the like to facilitate OTA communications) to communicate with components of a positioning network, such as navigation satellite constellation nodes. In some embodiments, the positioning circuitry  945  may include a Micro-Technology for Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (Micro-PNT) IC that uses a master timing clock to perform position tracking/estimation without GNSS assistance. The positioning circuitry  945  may also be part of, or interact with, the baseband circuitry  910  and/or RFEMs  915  to communicate with the nodes and components of the positioning network. The positioning circuitry  945  may also provide position data and/or time data to the application circuitry  905 , which may use the data to synchronize operations with various other infrastructure equipment, or the like. 
     The components shown by  FIG. 9  may communicate with one another using interface circuitry, which may include any number of bus and/or interconnect (IX) technologies such as industry standard architecture (ISA), extended ISA (EISA), inter-integrated circuit (I2C), an serial peripheral interface (SPI), point-to-point interfaces, power management bus (PMBus), peripheral component interconnect (PCI), PCI express (PCIe), Intel® Ultra Path Interface (UPI), Intel® Accelerator Link (IAL), Common Application Programming Interface (CAPI), Intel® QuickPath interconnect (QPI), Ultra Path Interconnect (UPI), Intel® Omni-Path Architecture (OPA) IX, RapidIO™ system IXs, Cache Coherent Interconnect for Accelerators (CCIA), Gen-Z Consortium IXs, Open Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface (OpenCAPI) IX, a HyperTransport interconnect, and/or any number of other IX technologies. The IX technology may be a proprietary bus, for example, used in an SoC based system. 
       FIG. 10  illustrates an example of an platform  1000  (also referred to as “system  1000 ,” “device  1000 ,” “appliance  1000 ,” or the like) in accordance with various embodiments. In embodiments, the platform  1000  may be suitable for use as UEs  101 , edge compute nodes  2101 , data collector nodes  2102 , IoT devices  1204 - 1504  of  FIGS. 12-15 , and/or any other element/device discussed herein with regard to  FIGS. 1-15 . Platform  1000  may also be implemented in or as a server computer system or some other element, device, or system discussed herein. The platform  1000  may include any combinations of the components shown in the example. The components of platform  1000  may be implemented as integrated circuits (ICs), portions thereof, discrete electronic devices, or other modules, logic, hardware, software, firmware, or a combination thereof adapted in the computer platform  1000 , or as components otherwise incorporated within a chassis of a larger system. The example of  FIG. 10  is intended to show a high level view of components of the computer platform  1000 . However, some of the components shown may be omitted, additional components may be present, and different arrangement of the components shown may occur in other implementations. 
     The platform  1000  includes processor circuitry  1002 . The processor circuitry  1002  includes circuitry such as, but not limited to one or more processor cores and one or more of cache memory, low drop-out voltage regulators (LDOs), interrupt controllers, serial interfaces such as serial peripheral interface (SPI), inter-integrated circuit (I2C) or universal programmable serial interface circuit, real time clock (RTC), timer-counters including interval and watchdog timers, general purpose input-output (I/O), memory card controllers such as secure digital/multi-media card (SD/MMC) or similar, universal serial bus (USB) interfaces, mobile industry processor interface (MIPI) interfaces and Joint Test Access Group (JTAG) test access ports. In some implementations, the processor circuitry  1002  may include one or more hardware accelerators, which may be microprocessors, programmable processing devices (e.g., FPGA, ASIC, etc.), or the like. The one or more hardware accelerators may include, for example, computer vision (CV) and/or deep learning (DL) accelerators. In some implementations, the processor circuitry  1002  may include on-chip memory circuitry, which may include any suitable volatile and/or non-volatile memory, such as DRAM, SRAM, EPROM, EEPROM, Flash memory, solid-state memory, and/or any other type of memory device technology, such as those discussed herein. 
     The processor(s) of processor circuitry  1002  may include, for example, one or more processor cores (CPUs), one or more application processors, one or more graphics processing units (GPUs), one or more reduced instruction set computing (RISC) processors, one or more Acorn RISC Machine (ARM) processors, one or more complex instruction set computing (CISC) processors, one or more digital signal processors (DSP), one or more FPGAs, one or more PLDs, one or more ASICs, one or more baseband processors, one or more radio-frequency integrated circuits (RFIC), one or more microprocessors or controllers, or any suitable combination thereof. The processors (or cores) of the processor circuitry  1002  may be coupled with or may include memory/storage and may be configured to execute instructions stored in the memory/storage to enable various applications or operating systems to run on the platform  1000 . In these embodiments, the processors (or cores) of the processor circuitry  1002  is configured to operate application software to provide a specific service to a user of the platform  1000 . In some embodiments, the processor circuitry  1002  may be a special-purpose processor/controller to operate according to the various embodiments herein. 
     As examples, the processor circuitry  1002  may include an Intel® Architecture Core™ based processor, such as a Quark™, an Atom™, an i3, an i5, an i7, or an MCU-class processor, Pentium® processor(s), Xeon® processor(s), or another such processor available from Intel® Corporation, Santa Clara, Calif. However, any number other processors may be used, such as one or more of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Zen® Core Architecture, such as Ryzen® or EPYC® processor(s), Accelerated Processing Units (APUs), MxGPUs, Epyc® processor(s), or the like; A5-A12 and/or S1-S4 processor(s) from Apple® Inc., Snapdragon™ or Centriq™ processor(s) from Qualcomm® Technologies, Inc., Texas Instruments, Inc.® Open Multimedia Applications Platform (OMAP)™ processor(s); a MIPS-based design from MIPS Technologies, Inc. such as MIPS Warrior M-class, Warrior I-class, and Warrior P-class processors; an ARM-based design licensed from ARM Holdings, Ltd., such as the ARM Cortex-A, Cortex-R, and Cortex-M family of processors; the ThunderX2® provided by Cavium™, Inc.; or the like. In some implementations, the processor circuitry  1002  may be a part of a system on a chip (SoC), System-in-Package (SiP), a multi-chip package (MCP), and/or the like, in which the processor circuitry  1002  and other components are formed into a single integrated circuit, or a single package, such as the Edison™ or Galileo™ SoC boards from Intel® Corporation. Other examples of the processor circuitry  1002  are mentioned elsewhere in the present disclosure. 
     Additionally or alternatively, processor circuitry  1002  may include circuitry such as, but not limited to, one or more FPDs such as FPGAs and the like; PLDs such as CPLDs, HCPLDs, and the like; ASICs such as structured ASICs and the like; PSoCs; and the like. In such embodiments, the circuitry of processor circuitry  1002  may comprise logic blocks or logic fabric including and other interconnected resources that may be programmed to perform various functions, such as the procedures, methods, functions, etc. of the various embodiments discussed herein. In such embodiments, the circuitry of processor circuitry  1002  may include memory cells (e.g., EPROM, EEPROM, flash memory, static memory (e.g., SRAM, anti-fuses, etc.) used to store logic blocks, logic fabric, data, etc. in LUTs and the like. 
     The processor circuitry  1002  may communicate with system memory circuitry  1004  over an interconnect  1006  (e.g., a bus). Any number of memory devices may be used to provide for a given amount of system memory. As examples, the memory circuitry  1004  may be random access memory (RAM) in accordance with a Joint Electron Devices Engineering Council (JEDEC) design such as the DDR or mobile DDR standards (e.g., LPDDR, LPDDR2, LPDDR3, or LPDDR4), dynamic RAM (DRAM), and/or synchronous DRAM (SDRAM)). The memory circuitry  1004  may also include nonvolatile memory (NVM) such as high-speed electrically erasable memory (commonly referred to as “flash memory”), phase change RAM (PRAM), resistive memory such as magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM), etc., and may incorporate three-dimensional (3D) cross-point (XPOINT) memories from Intel® and Micron®. The memory circuitry  1004  may also comprise persistent storage devices, which may be temporal and/or persistent storage of any type, including, but not limited to, non-volatile memory, optical, magnetic, and/or solid state mass storage, and so forth. 
     The individual memory devices of memory circuitry  1004  may be implemented as one or more of solder down packaged integrated circuits, socketed memory modules, and plug-in memory cards. The memory circuitry  1004  may be implemented as any number of different package types such as single die package (SDP), dual die package (DDP) or quad die package (Q17P). These devices, in some examples, may be directly soldered onto a motherboard to provide a lower profile solution, while in other examples the devices are configured as one or more memory modules that in turn couple to the motherboard by a given connector. Any number of other memory implementations may be used, such as other types of memory modules, e.g., dual inline memory modules (DIMMs) of different varieties including but not limited to microDIMMs or MiniDIMMs. Memory circuitry  1004 . In embodiments, the memory circuitry  1004  may be disposed in or on a same die or package as the processor circuitry  1002  (e.g., a same SoC, a same SiP, or soldered on a same MCP as the processor circuitry  1002 ). 
     To provide for persistent storage of information such as data, applications, operating systems (OS), and so forth, a storage circuitry  1008  may also couple to the processor circuitry  1002  via the interconnect  1006 . In an example, the storage circuitry  1008  may be implemented via a solid-state disk drive (SSDD). Other devices that may be used for the storage circuitry  1008  include flash memory cards, such as SD cards, microSD cards, xD picture cards, and the like, and USB flash drives. In low power implementations, the storage circuitry  1008  may be on-die memory or registers associated with the processor circuitry  1002 . However, in some examples, the storage circuitry  1008  may be implemented using a micro hard disk drive (HDD). Further, any number of new technologies may be used for the storage circuitry  1008  in addition to, or instead of, the technologies described, such resistance change memories, phase change memories, holographic memories, or chemical memories, among others. 
     The storage circuitry  1008  store computational logic  1083  (or “modules  1083 ”) in the form of software, firmware, or hardware commands to implement the techniques described herein. The computational logic  1083  may be employed to store working copies and/or permanent copies of computer programs, or data to create the computer programs, for the operation of various components of platform  1000  (e.g., drivers, etc.), an operating system of platform  1000 , one or more applications, and/or for carrying out the embodiments discussed herein. The computational logic  1083  may be stored or loaded into memory circuitry  1004  as instructions  1082 , or data to create the instructions  1082 , for execution by the processor circuitry  1002  to provide the functions described herein. The various elements may be implemented by assembler instructions supported by processor circuitry  1002  or high-level languages that may be compiled into such instructions (e.g., instructions  1070 , or data to create the instructions  1070 ). The permanent copy of the programming instructions may be placed into persistent storage devices of storage circuitry  1008  in the factory or in the field through, for example, a distribution medium (not shown), through a communication interface (e.g., from a distribution server (not shown)), or over-the-air (OTA). 
     In an example, the instructions  1082  provided via the memory circuitry  1004  and/or the storage circuitry  1008  of  FIG. 10  are embodied as one or more non-transitory computer readable storage media (see e.g., NTCRSM  1102  of  FIG. 11 ) including program code, a computer program product or data to create the computer program, with the computer program or data, to direct the processor circuitry  1002  of platform  1000  to perform electronic operations in the platform  1000 , and/or to perform a specific sequence or flow of actions, for example, as described with respect to the flowchart(s) and block diagram(s) of operations and functionality depicted previously (see e.g.,  FIGS. 2-5 ). The processor circuitry  1002  accesses the one or more non-transitory computer readable storage media over the interconnect  1006 . 
     Although the instructions  1082  are shown as code blocks included in the memory circuitry  1004  and the computational logic  1083  is shown as code blocks in the storage circuitry  1008 , it should be understood that any of the code blocks may be replaced with hardwired circuits, for example, built into an FPGA, ASIC, or some other suitable circuitry. For example, where processor circuitry  1002  includes (e.g., FPGA based) hardware accelerators as well as processor cores, the hardware accelerators (e.g., the FPGA cells) may be pre-configured (e.g., with appropriate bit streams) with the aforementioned computational logic to perform some or all of the functions discussed previously (in lieu of employment of programming instructions to be executed by the processor core(s)). 
     The memory circuitry  1004  and/or storage circuitry  1008  may store program code of an operating system (OS), which may be a general purpose OS or an OS specifically written for and tailored to the computing platform  1000 . For example, the OS may be Unix or a Unix-like OS such as Linux e.g., provided by Red Hat Enterprise, Windows 10™ provided by Microsoft Corp., macOS provided by Apple Inc®, or the like. In another example, the OS may be a mobile OS, such as Android® provided by Google Inc.®, iOS© provided by Apple Inc.®, Windows 10 Mobile® provided by Microsoft Corp.®, KaiOS provided by KaiOS Technologies Inc., or the like. In another example, the OS may be a real-time OS (RTOS), such as Apache Mynewt provided by the Apache Software Foundation®, Windows 10 For IoT® provided by Microsoft Corp.®, Micro-Controller Operating Systems (“MicroC/OS” or “p C/OS”) provided by Micrium®, Inc., FreeRTOS, VxWorks® provided by Wind River Systems, Inc.®, PikeOS provided by Sysgo AG®, Android Things® provided by Google Inc.®, QNX® RTOS provided by BlackBerry Ltd., or any other suitable RTOS, such as those discussed herein. 
     The OS may include one or more drivers that operate to control particular devices that are embedded in the platform  1000 , attached to the platform  1000 , or otherwise communicatively coupled with the platform  1000 . The drivers may include individual drivers allowing other components of the platform  1000  to interact or control various input/output (I/O) devices that may be present within, or connected to, the platform  1000 . For example, the drivers may include a display driver to control and allow access to a display device, a touchscreen driver to control and allow access to a touchscreen interface of the platform  1000 , sensor drivers to obtain sensor readings of sensor circuitry  1021  and control and allow access to sensor circuitry  1021 , actuator drivers to obtain actuator positions of the actuators  1022  and/or control and allow access to the actuators  1022 , a camera driver to control and allow access to an embedded image capture device, audio drivers to control and allow access to one or more audio devices. The OSs may also include one or more libraries, drivers, APIs, firmware, middleware, software glue, etc., which provide program code and/or software components for one or more applications to obtain and use the data from a secure execution environment (SEE), trusted execution environment (TEE), and/or management engine of the platform  1000  (not shown). 
     The components may communicate over the interconnect  1006 . The interconnect  1006  may include any number of technologies, including industry standard architecture (ISA), extended ISA (EISA), peripheral component interconnect (PCI), peripheral component interconnect extended (PCIx), PCI express (PCIe), or any number of other technologies. The interconnect  1006  may be a proprietary bus, for example, used in a SoC based system. Other bus systems may be included, such as an I 2 C interface, an SPI interface, point-to-point interfaces, and a power bus, among others. 
     The interconnect  1006  couples the processor circuitry  1002  to the communication circuitry  1009  for communications with other devices. The communication circuitry  1009  is a hardware element, or collection of hardware elements, used to communicate over one or more networks (e.g., cloud  1001 ) and/or with other devices (e.g., mesh devices/fog  1064 ). The communication circuitry  1009  includes baseband circuitry  1010  (or “modem  1010 ”) and radiofrequency (RF) circuitry  1011  and  1012 . 
     The baseband circuitry  1010  includes one or more processing devices (e.g., baseband processors) to carry out various protocol and radio control functions. Baseband circuitry  1010  may interface with application circuitry of platform  1000  (e.g., a combination of processor circuitry  1002 , memory circuitry  1004 , and/or storage circuitry  1008 ) for generation and processing of baseband signals and for controlling operations of the RF circuitry  1011  or  1012 . The baseband circuitry  1010  may handle various radio control functions that enable communication with one or more radio networks via the RF circuitry  1011  or  1012 . The baseband circuitry  1010  may include circuitry such as, but not limited to, one or more single-core or multi-core processors (e.g., one or more baseband processors) or control logic to process baseband signals received from a receive signal path of the RF circuitry  1011  and/or  1012 , and to generate baseband signals to be provided to the RF circuitry  1011  or  1012  via a transmit signal path. In various embodiments, the baseband circuitry  1010  may implement a real-time OS (RTOS) to manage resources of the baseband circuitry  1010 , schedule tasks, etc. Examples of the RTOS may include Operating System Embedded (OSE)™ provided by Enea®, Nucleus RTOS™ provided by Mentor Graphics®, Versatile Real-Time Executive (VRTX) provided by Mentor Graphics®, ThreadX™ provided by Express Logic®, FreeRTOS, REX OS provided by Qualcomm®, OKL4 provided by Open Kernel (OK) Labs®, or any other suitable RTOS, such as those discussed herein. 
     Although not shown by  FIG. 10 , in one embodiment, the baseband circuitry  1010  includes individual processing device(s) to operate one or more wireless communication protocols (e.g., a “multi-protocol baseband processor” or “protocol processing circuitry”) and individual processing device(s) to implement physical layer (PHY) functions. In this embodiment, the protocol processing circuitry operates or implements various protocol layers/entities of one or more wireless communication protocols. In a first example, the protocol processing circuitry may operate Long Term Evolution (LTE) protocol entities and/or Fifth Generation (5G)/New Radio (NR) protocol entities when the communication circuitry  1009  is a cellular radiofrequency communication system, such as millimeter wave (mmWave) communication circuitry or some other suitable cellular communication circuitry. In the first example, the protocol processing circuitry  1005  would operate medium access control (MAC), radio link control (RLC), packet data convergence protocol (PDCP), service data adaptation protocol (SDAP), radio resource control (RRC), and non-access stratum (NAS) functions. In a second example, the protocol processing circuitry may operate one or more IEEE-based protocols when the communication circuitry  1009  is WiFi communication system. In the second example, the protocol processing circuitry would operate WiFi MAC and logical link control (LLC) functions. The protocol processing circuitry may include one or more memory structures (not shown) to store program code and data for operating the protocol functions, as well as one or more processing cores (not shown) to execute the program code and perform various operations using the data. The protocol processing circuitry provides control functions for the baseband circuitry  1010  and/or RF circuitry  1011  and  1012 . The baseband circuitry  1010  may also support radio communications for more than one wireless protocol. 
     Continuing with the aforementioned embodiment, the baseband circuitry  1010  includes individual processing device(s) to implement PHY including hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) functions, scrambling and/or descrambling, (en)coding and/or decoding, layer mapping and/or de-mapping, modulation symbol mapping, received symbol and/or bit metric determination, multi-antenna port pre-coding and/or decoding which may include one or more of space-time, space-frequency or spatial coding, reference signal generation and/or detection, preamble sequence generation and/or decoding, synchronization sequence generation and/or detection, control channel signal blind decoding, radio frequency shifting, and other related functions. etc. The modulation/demodulation functionality may include Fast-Fourier Transform (FFT), precoding, or constellation mapping/demapping functionality. The (en)coding/decoding functionality may include convolution, tail-biting convolution, turbo, Viterbi, or Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) coding. Embodiments of modulation/demodulation and encoder/decoder functionality are not limited to these examples and may include other suitable functionality in other embodiments. 
     The communication circuitry  1009  also includes RF circuitry  1011  and  1012  to enable communication with wireless networks using modulated electromagnetic radiation through a non-solid medium. Each of the RF circuitry  1011  and  1012  include a receive signal path, which may include circuitry to convert analog RF signals (e.g., an existing or received modulated waveform) into digital baseband signals to be provided to the baseband circuitry  1010 . Each of the RF circuitry  1011  and  1012  also include a transmit signal path, which may include circuitry configured to convert digital baseband signals provided by the baseband circuitry  1010  to be converted into analog RF signals (e.g., modulated waveform) that will be amplified and transmitted via an antenna array including one or more antenna elements (not shown). The antenna array may be a plurality of microstrip antennas or printed antennas that are fabricated on the surface of one or more printed circuit boards. The antenna array may be formed in as a patch of metal foil (e.g., a patch antenna) in a variety of shapes, and may be coupled with the RF circuitry  1011  or  1012  using metal transmission lines or the like. 
     The RF circuitry  1011  (also referred to as a “mesh transceiver”) is used for communications with other mesh or fog devices  1064 . The mesh transceiver  1011  may use any number of frequencies and protocols, such as 2.4 Gigahertz (GHz) transmissions under the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, using the Bluetooth® low energy (BLE) standard, as defined by the Bluetooth® Special Interest Group, or the ZigBee® standard, among others. Any number of RF circuitry  1011 , configured for a particular wireless communication protocol, may be used for the connections to the mesh devices  1064 . For example, a WLAN unit may be used to implement Wi-Fi™ communications in accordance with the IEEE 802.11 standard. In addition, wireless wide area communications, for example, according to a cellular or other wireless wide area protocol, may occur via a WWAN unit. 
     The mesh transceiver  1011  may communicate using multiple standards or radios for communications at different ranges. For example, the platform  1000  may communicate with close/proximate devices, e.g., within about 10 meters, using a local transceiver based on BLE, or another low power radio, to save power. More distant mesh devices  1064 , e.g., within about 50 meters, may be reached over ZigBee or other intermediate power radios. Both communications techniques may take place over a single radio at different power levels, or may take place over separate transceivers, for example, a local transceiver using BLE and a separate mesh transceiver using ZigBee. 
     The RF circuitry  1012  (also referred to as a “wireless network transceiver,” a “cloud transceiver,” or the like) may be included to communicate with devices or services in the cloud  1001  via local or wide area network protocols. The wireless network transceiver  1012  includes one or more radios to communicate with devices in the cloud  1001 . The cloud  1001  may be the same or similar to cloud  302  discussed previously. The wireless network transceiver  1012  may be a LPWA transceiver that follows the IEEE 802.15.4, or IEEE 802.15.4g standards, among others, such as those discussed herein. The platform  1000  may communicate over a wide area using LoRaWAN™ (Long Range Wide Area Network) developed by Semtech and the LoRa Alliance. The techniques described herein are not limited to these technologies, but may be used with any number of other cloud transceivers that implement long range, low bandwidth communications, such as Sigfox, and other technologies. Further, other communications techniques, such as time-slotted channel hopping, described in the IEEE 1002.15.4e specification may be used. 
     Any number of other radio communications and protocols may be used in addition to the systems mentioned for the mesh transceiver  1011  and wireless network transceiver  1012 , as described herein. For example, the radio transceivers  1011  and  1012  may include an LTE or other cellular transceiver that uses spread spectrum (SPA/SAS) communications for implementing high-speed communications. Further, any number of other protocols may be used, such as Wi-Fi® networks for medium speed communications and provision of network communications. 
     The transceivers  1011  and  1012  may include radios that are compatible with, and/or may operate according to any one or more of the following radio communication technologies and/or standards including but not limited to: a Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) radio communication technology, a General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) radio communication technology, an Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE) radio communication technology, and/or a Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) radio communication technology, for example Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), Freedom of Multimedia Access (FOMA), 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE), 3GPP Long Term Evolution Advanced (LTE Advanced), Code division multiple access 2000 (CDM2000), Cellular Digital Packet Data (CDPD), Mobitex, Third Generation (3G), Circuit Switched Data (CSD), High-Speed Circuit-Switched Data (HSCSD), Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (Third Generation) (UMTS (3G)), Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) (W-CDMA (UMTS)), High Speed Packet Access (HSPA), High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA), High-Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA), High Speed Packet Access Plus (HSPA+), Universal Mobile Telecommunications System-Time-Division Duplex (UMTS-TDD), Time Division-Code Division Multiple Access (TD-CDMA), Time Division-Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access (TD-CDMA), 3rd Generation Partnership Project Release 8 (Pre-4th Generation) (3GPP Rel. 8 (Pre-4G)), 3GPP Rel. 9 (3rd Generation Partnership Project Release 9), 3GPP Rel. 10 (3rd Generation Partnership Project Release 10), 3GPP Rel. 11 (3rd Generation Partnership Project Release 11), 3GPP Rel. 12 (3rd Generation Partnership Project Release 12), 3GPP Rel. 13 (3rd Generation Partnership Project Release 13), 3GPP Rel. 14 (3rd Generation Partnership Project Release 14), 3GPP Rel. 15 (3rd Generation Partnership Project Release 15), 3GPP Rel. 16 (3rd Generation Partnership Project Release 16), 3GPP Rel. 17 (3rd Generation Partnership Project Release 17) and subsequent Releases (such as Rel. 18, Rel. 19, etc.), 3GPP 5G, 3GPP LTE Extra, LTE-Advanced Pro, LTE Licensed-Assisted Access (LAA), MuLTEfire, UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access (UTRA), Evolved UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA), Long Term Evolution Advanced (4th Generation) (LTE Advanced (4G)), cdmaOne (2G), Code division multiple access 2000 (Third generation) (CDM2000 (3G)), Evolution-Data Optimized or Evolution-Data Only (EV-DO), Advanced Mobile Phone System (1st Generation) (AMPS (1G)), Total Access Communication System/Extended Total Access Communication System (TACS/ETACS), Digital AMPS (2nd Generation) (D-AMPS (2G)), Push-to-talk (PTT), Mobile Telephone System (MTS), Improved Mobile Telephone System (IMTS), Advanced Mobile Telephone System (AMTS), OLT (Norwegian for Offentlig Landmobil Telefoni, Public Land Mobile Telephony), MTD (Swedish abbreviation for Mobiltelefonisystem D, or Mobile telephony system D), Public Automated Land Mobile (Autotel/PALM), ARP (Finnish for Autoradiopuhelin, “car radio phone”), NMT (Nordic Mobile Telephony), High capacity version of NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone) (Hicap), Cellular Digital Packet Data (CDPD), Mobitex, DataTAC, Integrated Digital Enhanced Network (iDEN), Personal Digital Cellular (PDC), Circuit Switched Data (CSD), Personal Handy-phone System (PHS), Wideband Integrated Digital Enhanced Network (WiDEN), iBurst, Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA), also referred to as also referred to as 3GPP Generic Access Network, or GAN standard), Bluetooth®, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), IEEE 802.15.4 based protocols (e.g., IPv6 over Low power Wireless Personal Area Networks (6LoWPAN), WirelessHART, MiWi, Thread, 802.11a, etc.) WiFi-direct, ANT/ANT+, ZigBee, Z-Wave, 3GPP device-to-device (D2D) or Proximity Services (ProSe), Universal Plug and Play (UPnP), Low-Power Wide-Area-Network (LPWAN), Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRA) or LoRaWAN™ developed by Semtech and the LoRa Alliance, Sigfox, Wireless Gigabit Alliance (WiGig) standard, mmWave standards in general (wireless systems operating at 10-300 GHz and above such as WiGig, IEEE 802.1 lad, IEEE 802.1 lay, etc.), technologies operating above 300 GHz and THz bands, (3GPP/LTE based or IEEE 802.11p and other) V2X communication technologies, 3GPP cellular V2X, DSRC (Dedicated Short Range Communications) communication systems such as Intelligent-Transport-Systems and others, the European ITS-G5 system (i.e. the European flavor of IEEE 802.11p based DSRC, including ITS-G5A (i.e., Operation of ITS-G5 in European ITS frequency bands dedicated to ITS for safety re-lated applications in the frequency range 5,875 GHz to 5,905 GHz), ITS-G5B (i.e., Operation in European ITS frequency bands dedicated to ITS non-safety applications in the frequency range 5,855 GHz to 5,875 GHz), ITS-G5C (i.e., Operation of ITS applications in the frequency range 5,470 GHz to 5,725 GHz)), etc. In addition to the standards listed above, any number of satellite uplink technologies may be used for the transceivers  1011 ,  1012  including, for example, radios compliant with standards issued by the ITU (International Telecommunication Union), or the ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute), among others. The examples provided herein are thus understood as being applicable to various other communication technologies, both existing and not yet formulated. 
     Network interface circuitry/controller (NIC)  1016  may be included to provide wired communication to the cloud  1001  or to other devices, such as the mesh devices  1064  using a standard network interface protocol. The standard network interface protocol may include Ethernet, Ethernet over GRE Tunnels, Ethernet over Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), Ethernet over USB, or may be based on other types of network protocols, such as Controller Area Network (CAN), Local Interconnect Network (LIN), DeviceNet, ControlNet, Data Highway+, PROFIBUS, or PROFINET, among many others. Network connectivity may be provided to/from the platform  1000  via NIC  1016  using a physical connection, which may be electrical (e.g., a “copper interconnect”) or optical. The physical connection also includes suitable input connectors (e.g., ports, receptacles, sockets, etc.) and output connectors (e.g., plugs, pins, etc.). The NIC  1016  may include one or more dedicated processors and/or FPGAs to communicate using one or more of the aforementioned network interface protocols. In some implementations, the NIC  1016  may include multiple controllers to provide connectivity to other networks using the same or different protocols. For example, the platform  1000  may include a first NIC  1016  providing communications to the cloud over Ethernet and a second NIC  1016  providing communications to other devices over another type of network. 
     The interconnect  1006  may couple the processor circuitry  1002  to an external interface  1018  (also referred to as “I/O interface circuitry” or the like) that is used to connect external devices or subsystems. The external devices include, inter alia, sensor circuitry  1021 , actuators  1022 , and positioning circuitry  1045 . The sensor circuitry  1021  may include devices, modules, or subsystems whose purpose is to detect events or changes in its environment and send the information (sensor data) about the detected events to some other a device, module, subsystem, etc. Examples of such sensors  621  include, inter alia, inertia measurement units (IMU) comprising accelerometers, gyroscopes, and/or magnetometers; microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) or nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) comprising 3-axis accelerometers, 3-axis gyroscopes, and/or magnetometers; level sensors; flow sensors; temperature sensors (e.g., thermistors); pressure sensors; barometric pressure sensors; gravimeters; altimeters; image capture devices (e.g., cameras); light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensors; proximity sensors (e.g., infrared radiation detector and the like), depth sensors, ambient light sensors, ultrasonic transceivers; microphones; etc. 
     The external interface  1018  connects the platform  1000  to actuators  1022 , allow platform  1000  to change its state, position, and/or orientation, or move or control a mechanism or system. The actuators  1022  comprise electrical and/or mechanical devices for moving or controlling a mechanism or system, and converts energy (e.g., electric current or moving air and/or liquid) into some kind of motion. The actuators  1022  may include one or more electronic (or electrochemical) devices, such as piezoelectric biomorphs, solid state actuators, solid state relays (SSRs), shape-memory alloy-based actuators, electroactive polymer-based actuators, relay driver integrated circuits (ICs), and/or the like. The actuators  1022  may include one or more electromechanical devices such as pneumatic actuators, hydraulic actuators, electromechanical switches including electromechanical relays (EMRs), motors (e.g., DC motors, stepper motors, servomechanisms, etc.), wheels, thrusters, propellers, claws, clamps, hooks, an audible sound generator, and/or other like electromechanical components. The platform  1000  may be configured to operate one or more actuators  1022  based on one or more captured events and/or instructions or control signals received from a service provider and/or various client systems. 
     The positioning circuitry  1045  includes circuitry to receive and decode signals transmitted/broadcasted by a positioning network of a global navigation satellite system (GNSS). Examples of navigation satellite constellations (or GNSS) include United States&#39; Global Positioning System (GPS), Russia&#39;s Global Navigation System (GLONASS), the European Union&#39;s Galileo system, China&#39;s BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, a regional navigation system or GNSS augmentation system (e.g., Navigation with Indian Constellation (NAVIC), Japan&#39;s Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS), France&#39;s Doppler Orbitography and Radio-positioning Integrated by Satellite (DORIS), etc.), or the like. The positioning circuitry  1045  comprises various hardware elements (e.g., including hardware devices such as switches, filters, amplifiers, antenna elements, and the like to facilitate OTA communications) to communicate with components of a positioning network, such as navigation satellite constellation nodes. In some embodiments, the positioning circuitry  1045  may include a Micro-Technology for Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (Micro-PNT) IC that uses a master timing clock to perform position tracking/estimation without GNSS assistance. The positioning circuitry  1045  may also be part of, or interact with, the communication circuitry  1009  to communicate with the nodes and components of the positioning network. The positioning circuitry  1045  may also provide position data and/or time data to the application circuitry, which may use the data to synchronize operations with various infrastructure (e.g., radio base stations), for turn-by-turn navigation, or the like. 
     In some examples, various input/output (I/O) devices may be present within, or connected to, the platform  1000 , which are referred to as input device circuitry  1086  and output device circuitry  1084  in  FIG. 10 . The input device circuitry  1086  and output device circuitry  1084  include one or more user interfaces designed to enable user interaction with the platform  1000  and/or peripheral component interfaces designed to enable peripheral component interaction with the platform  1000 . Input device circuitry  1086  may include any physical or virtual means for accepting an input including, inter alia, one or more physical or virtual buttons (e.g., a reset button), a physical keyboard, keypad, mouse, touchpad, touchscreen, microphones, scanner, headset, and/or the like. 
     The output device circuitry  1084  may be included to show information or otherwise convey information, such as sensor readings, actuator position(s), or other like information. Data and/or graphics may be displayed on one or more user interface components of the output device circuitry  1084 . Output device circuitry  1084  may include any number and/or combinations of audio or visual display, including, inter alia, one or more simple visual outputs/indicators (e.g., binary status indicators (e.g., light emitting diodes (LEDs)) and multi-character visual outputs, or more complex outputs such as display devices or touchscreens (e.g., Liquid Chrystal Displays (LCD), LED displays, quantum dot displays, projectors, etc.), with the output of characters, graphics, multimedia objects, and the like being generated or produced from the operation of the platform  1000 . The output device circuitry  1084  may also include speakers or other audio emitting devices, printer(s), and/or the like. In some embodiments, the sensor circuitry  1021  may be used as the input device circuitry  1086  (e.g., an image capture device, motion capture device, or the like) and one or more actuators  1022  may be used as the output device circuitry  1084  (e.g., an actuator to provide haptic feedback or the like). In another example, near-field communication (NFC) circuitry comprising an NFC controller coupled with an antenna element and a processing device may be included to read electronic tags and/or connect with another NFC-enabled device. Peripheral component interfaces may include, but are not limited to, a non-volatile memory port, a universal serial bus (USB) port, an audio jack, a power supply interface, etc. 
     A battery  1024  may be coupled to the platform  1000  to power the platform  1000 , which may be used in embodiments where the platform  1000  is not in a fixed location. The battery  1024  may be a lithium ion battery, a lead-acid automotive battery, or a metal-air battery, such as a zinc-air battery, an aluminum-air battery, a lithium-air battery, a lithium polymer battery, and/or the like. In embodiments where the platform  1000  is mounted in a fixed location, the platform  1000  may have a power supply coupled to an electrical grid. In these embodiments, the platform  1000  may include power tee circuitry to provide for electrical power drawn from a network cable to provide both power supply and data connectivity to the platform  1000  using a single cable. 
     Power management integrated circuitry (PMIC)  1026  may be included in the platform  1000  to track the state of charge (SoCh) of the battery  1024 , and to control charging of the platform  1000 . The PMIC  1026  may be used to monitor other parameters of the battery  1024  to provide failure predictions, such as the state of health (SoH) and the state of function (SoF) of the battery  1024 . The PMIC  1026  may include voltage regulators, surge protectors, power alarm detection circuitry. The power alarm detection circuitry may detect one or more of brown out (under-voltage) and surge (over-voltage) conditions. The PMIC  1026  may communicate the information on the battery  1024  to the processor circuitry  1002  over the interconnect  1006 . The PMIC  1026  may also include an analog-to-digital (ADC) convertor that allows the processor circuitry  1002  to directly monitor the voltage of the battery  1024  or the current flow from the battery  1024 . The battery parameters may be used to determine actions that the platform  1000  may perform, such as transmission frequency, mesh network operation, sensing frequency, and the like. As an example, the PMIC  1026  may be a battery monitoring integrated circuit, such as an LTC4020 or an LTC2990 from Linear Technologies, an ADT7488A from ON Semiconductor of Phoenix Ariz., or an IC from the UCD90xxx family from Texas Instruments of Dallas, Tex. 
     A power block  1028 , or other power supply coupled to a grid, may be coupled with the PMIC  1026  to charge the battery  1024 . In some examples, the power block  1028  may be replaced with a wireless power receiver to obtain the power wirelessly, for example, through a loop antenna in the platform  1000 . A wireless battery charging circuit, such as an LTC4020 chip from Linear Technologies of Milpitas, Calif., among others, may be included in the PMIC  1026 . The specific charging circuits chosen depend on the size of the battery  1024 , and thus, the current required. The charging may be performed using the Airfuel standard promulgated by the Airfuel Alliance, the Qi wireless charging standard promulgated by the Wireless Power Consortium, or the Rezence charging standard, promulgated by the Alliance for Wireless Power, among others. 
     Furthermore, the present disclosure may take the form of a computer program product or data to create the computer program, with the computer program or data embodied in any tangible or non-transitory medium of expression having the computer-usable program code (or data to create the computer program) embodied in the medium.  FIG. 11  illustrates an example non-transitory computer-readable storage media (NTCRSM) that may be suitable for use to store instructions (or data that creates the instructions) that cause an apparatus (such as any of the devices/components/systems described with regard to  FIGS. 1-10 ), in response to execution of the instructions by the apparatus, to practice selected aspects of the present disclosure. As shown, NTCRSM  1102  may include a number of programming instructions  1104  (or data to create the programming instructions). Programming instructions  1104  may be configured to enable a device (e.g., any of the devices/components/systems described with regard to  FIGS. 1-10 ), in response to execution of the programming instructions, to perform various programming operations associated with operating system functions, one or more applications, and/or aspects of the present disclosure (including various programming operations associated with  FIGS. 2-5 ). 
     In alternate embodiments, programming instructions  1104  (or data to create the instructions) may be disposed on multiple NTCRSM  1102 . In alternate embodiments, programming instructions  1104  (or data to create the instructions) may be disposed on computer-readable transitory storage media, such as, signals. The instructions embodied by a machine-readable medium may further be transmitted or received over a communications network using a transmission medium via a network interface device utilizing any one of a number of transfer protocols (e.g., HTTP). Any combination of one or more computer usable or computer readable medium(s) may be utilized. The computer-usable or computer-readable medium may be, for example but not limited to, one or more electronic, magnetic, optical, electromagnetic, infrared, or semiconductor systems, apparatuses, devices, or propagation media. For instance, the NTCRSM  1102  may be embodied by devices described for the storage circuitry  1008  and/or memory circuitry  1004  described with regard to  FIG. 10 . More specific examples (a non-exhaustive list) of a computer-readable medium would include the following: an electrical connection having one or more wires, a portable computer diskette, a hard disk, a random access memory (RAM), a read-only memory (ROM), an erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM, Flash memory, etc.), an optical fiber, a portable compact disc read-only memory (CD-ROM), an optical storage device and/or optical disks, a transmission media such as those supporting the Internet or an intranet, a magnetic storage device, or any number of other hardware devices. Note that the computer-usable or computer-readable medium could even be paper or another suitable medium upon which the program (or data to create the program) is printed, as the program (or data to create the program) can be electronically captured, via, for instance, optical scanning of the paper or other medium, then compiled, interpreted, or otherwise processed in a suitable manner, if necessary, and then stored in a computer memory (with or without having been staged in or more intermediate storage media). In the context of this document, a computer-usable or computer-readable medium may be any medium that can contain, store, communicate, propagate, or transport the program (or data to create the program) for use by or in connection with the instruction execution system, apparatus, or device. The computer-usable medium may include a propagated data signal with the computer-usable program code (or data to create the program code) embodied therewith, either in baseband or as part of a carrier wave. The computer usable program code (or data to create the program) may be transmitted using any appropriate medium, including but not limited to wireless, wireline, optical fiber cable, RF, etc. 
     In various embodiments, the program code (or data to create the program code) described herein may be stored in one or more of a compressed format, an encrypted format, a fragmented format, a packaged format, etc. Program code (or data to create the program code) as described herein may require one or more of installation, modification, adaptation, updating, combining, supplementing, configuring, decryption, decompression, unpacking, distribution, reassignment, etc. in order to make them directly readable and/or executable by a computing device and/or other machine. For example, the program code (or data to create the program code) may be stored in multiple parts, which are individually compressed, encrypted, and stored on separate computing devices, wherein the parts when decrypted, decompressed, and combined form a set of executable instructions that implement the program code (the data to create the program code (such as that described herein. In another example, the Program code (or data to create the program code) may be stored in a state in which they may be read by a computer, but require addition of a library (e.g., a dynamic link library), a software development kit (SDK), an application programming interface (API), etc. in order to execute the instructions on a particular computing device or other device. In another example, the program code (or data to create the program code) may need to be configured (e.g., settings stored, data input, network addresses recorded, etc.) before the program code (or data to create the program code) can be executed/used in whole or in part. In this example, the program code (or data to create the program code) may be unpacked, configured for proper execution, and stored in a first location with the configuration instructions located in a second location distinct from the first location. The configuration instructions can be initiated by an action, trigger, or instruction that is not co-located in storage or execution location with the instructions enabling the disclosed techniques. Accordingly, the disclosed program code (or data to create the program code) are intended to encompass such machine readable instructions and/or program(s) (or data to create such machine readable instruction and/or programs) regardless of the particular format or state of the machine readable instructions and/or program(s) when stored or otherwise at rest or in transit. 
     Computer program code for carrying out operations of the present disclosure (e.g., computational logic  1083 , instructions  1082 ,  1070  discussed previously with regard to  FIG. 10 ) may be written in any combination of one or more programming languages, including an object oriented programming language such as Python, Ruby, Scala, Smalltalk, Java™, C++, C#, or the like; a procedural programming languages, such as the “C” programming language, the Go (or “Golang”) programming language, or the like; a scripting language such as JavaScript, Server-Side JavaScript (SSJS), JQuery, PHP, Pearl, Python, Ruby on Rails, Accelerated Mobile Pages Script (AMPscript), Mustache Template Language, Handlebars Template Language, Guide Template Language (GTL), PHP, Java and/or Java Server Pages (JSP), Node.js, ASP.NET, and/or the like; a markup language such as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), Extensible Markup Language (XML), Java Script Object Notion (JSON), Apex®, Cascading Stylesheets (CSS), JavaServer Pages (JSP), MessagePack™, Apache® Thrift, Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1), Google® Protocol Buffers (protobuf), or the like; some other suitable programming languages including proprietary programming languages and/or development tools, or any other languages tools. The computer program code for carrying out operations of the present disclosure may also be written in any combination of the programming languages discussed herein. The program code may execute entirely on the system  1000 , partly on the system  1000 , as a stand-alone software package, partly on the system  1000  and partly on a remote computer or entirely on the remote computer or server (e.g., system  900 ). In the latter scenario, the remote computer may be connected to the system  1000  through any type of network, including a local area network (LAN) or a wide area network (WAN), or the connection may be made to an external computer (for example, through the Internet using an Internet Service Provider). 
     3. Example Edge/Fog Systems and Implementations 
     The internet of things (IoT) is a concept in which a large number of computing devices are interconnected to each other and to the Internet to provide functionality and data acquisition at very low levels. As used herein, an IoT device may include a semiautonomous device performing a function, such as sensing or control, among others, in communication with other IoT devices and a wider network, such as the Internet. Often, IoT devices are limited in memory, size, or functionality, allowing larger numbers to be deployed for a similar cost to smaller numbers of larger devices. However, an IoT device may be a smart phone, laptop, tablet, or PC, or other larger device. Further, an IoT device may be a virtual device, such as an application on a smart phone or other computing device. IoT devices may include IoT gateways, used to couple IoT devices to other IoT devices and to cloud applications, for data storage, process control, and the like. 
     Networks of IoT devices may include commercial and home automation devices, such as water distribution systems, electric power distribution systems, pipeline control systems, plant control systems, light switches, thermostats, locks, cameras, alarms, motion sensors, and the like. The IoT devices may be accessible through remote computers, servers, and other systems, for example, to control systems or access data. 
     The future growth of the Internet may include very large numbers of IoT devices. Accordingly, as described herein, a number of innovations for the future Internet address the need for all these layers to grow unhindered, to discover and make accessible connected resources, and to support the ability to hide and compartmentalize connected resources. Any number of network protocols and communications standards may be used, wherein each protocol and standard is designed to address specific objectives. Further, the protocols are part of the fabric supporting human accessible services that operate regardless of location, time or space. The innovations include service delivery and associated infrastructure, such as hardware and software. The services may be provided in accordance with the Quality of Service (QoS) terms specified in service level and service delivery agreements. The use of IoT devices and networks present a number of new challenges in a heterogeneous network of connectivity comprising a combination of wired and wireless technologies as depicted in  FIGS. 9-12 . 
       FIG. 12  illustrates an arrangement  1200  showing interconnections that may be present between the Internet and IoT networks, in accordance with various embodiments. The interconnections may couple smaller networks  1202 , down to the individual IoT device  1204 , to the fiber backbone  1206  of the Internet  1200 . To simplify the drawing, not every device  1204 , or other object, is labeled. 
     In  FIG. 12 , top-level providers, which may be termed tier  1  providers  1208 , are coupled by the fiber backbone of the Internet to other providers, such as secondary or tier  2  providers  1210 . In one example, a tier  2  provider  1210  may couple to a tower  1212  of an LTE cellular network, for example, by further fiber links, by microwave communications  1214 , or by other communications technologies. The tower  1212  may couple to a mesh network including IoT devices  1204  through an LTE communication link  1216 , for example, through a central node  1218 . The communications between the individual IoT devices  1204  may also be based on LTE or NR communication links  1216 . In another example, a high-speed uplink  1221  may couple a tier  2  provider  1210  to a gateway (GW)  1220 . A number of IoT devices  1204  may communicate with the GW  1220 , and with each other through the GW  1220 , for example, over BLE links  1222 . 
     The fiber backbone  1206  may couple lower levels of service providers to the Internet, such as tier  3  providers  1224 . A tier  3  provider  1224  may be considered a general Internet service provider (ISP), for example, purchasing access to the fiber backbone  1210  from a tier  2  provider  1210  and providing access to a corporate GW  1226  and other customers. From the corporate GW  1226 , a wireless local area network (WLAN) can be used to communicate with IoT devices  1204  through Wi-Fi® links  1228 . A Wi-Fi link  1228  may also be used to couple to a low power wide area (LPWA) GW  1230 , which can communicate with IoT devices  1204  over LPWA links  1232 , for example, compatible with the LoRaWan specification promulgated by the LoRa alliance. 
     The tier  3  provider  1224  may also provide access to a mesh network  1234  through a coordinator device  1236  that communicates with the tier  3  provider  1224  using any number of communications links, such as an LTE cellular link, an LPWA link, or a link  1238  based on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, such as Zigbee®. Other coordinator devices  1236  may provide a chain of links that forms cluster tree of linked devices. 
     IoT devices  1204  may be any object, device, sensor, or “thing” that is embedded with hardware and/or software components that enable the object, device, sensor, or “thing” capable of capturing and/or recording data associated with an event, and capable of communicating such data with one or more other devices over a network with little or no user intervention. For instance, in various embodiments, IoT devices  1204  may be abiotic devices such as autonomous sensors, gauges, meters, image capture devices, microphones, machine-type communications (MTC) devices, machine-to-machine (M2M) devices, light emitting devices, audio emitting devices, audio and/or video playback devices, electro-mechanical devices (e.g., switch, actuator, etc.), and the like. In some embodiments, IoT devices  1204  may be biotic devices such as monitoring implants, biosensors, biochips, and the like. In other embodiments, an IoT device  1204  may be a computer device that is embedded in a computer system and coupled with communications circuitry of the computer system. In such embodiments, the IoT device  1204  refer to a system on chip (SoC), a universal integrated circuitry card (UICC), an embedded UICC (eUICC), and the like, and the computer system may be a mobile station (e.g., a smartphone) or user equipment, laptop PC, wearable device (e.g., a smart watch, fitness tracker, etc.), “smart” appliance (e.g., a television, refrigerator, a security system, etc.), and the like. 
     Each of the IoT devices  1204  may include one or more memory devices and one or more processors to capture and store/record data. Each of the IoT devices  1204  may include appropriate communications circuitry (e.g., transceiver(s), modem, antenna elements, etc.) to communicate (e.g., transmit and receive) captured and stored/recorded data. Further, each IoT device  1204  may include other transceivers for communications using additional protocols and frequencies. The wireless communications protocols may be any suitable set of standardized rules or instructions implemented by the IoT devices  1204  to communicate with other devices, including instructions for packetizing/depacketizing data, instructions for modulating/demodulating signals, instructions for implementation of protocols stacks, and the like. For example, IoT devices  1204  may include communications circuitry that is configurable to communicate in accordance with one or more person-to-person (P2P) or personal area network (PAN) protocols (e.g., IEEE 802.15.4 based protocols including ZigBee, IPv6 over Low power Wireless Personal Area Networks (6LoWPAN), WirelessHART, MiWi, Thread, etc.; WiFi-direct; Bluetooth/BLE protocols; ANT protocols; Z-Wave; LTE D2D or ProSe; UPnP; and the like); configurable to communicate using one or more LAN and/or WLAN protocols (e.g., Wi-Fi-based protocols or IEEE 802.11 protocols, such as IEEE 802.16 protocols); one or more cellular communications protocols (e.g., LTE/LTE-A, UMTS, GSM, EDGE, Wi-MAX, etc.); and the like. In embodiments, one or more of the IoT devices  1204 , tower  1212 , GW  1220 ,  1226 , and  1230 , coordinator device  1236 , and so forth, may also be incorporated with the embodiments described herein, in particular, with references to  FIGS. 1-5 . In particular, the IoT devices  1204 , tower  1212 , GW  1220 ,  1226 , and  1230 , coordinator device  1236 , and so forth, may correspond with the computing devices/systems discussed previously with regard to  FIGS. 1 and 6-11 . 
     The technologies and networks may enable the exponential growth of devices and networks. As the technologies grow, the network may be developed for self-management, functional evolution, and collaboration, without needing direct human intervention. Thus, the technologies will enable networks to function without centralized controlled systems. The technologies described herein may automate the network management and operation functions beyond current capabilities. 
       FIG. 13  illustrates an example domain topology  1300  that may be used for a number of IoT networks coupled through backbone links  1302  to GWs  1354 , in accordance with various embodiments. To simplify the drawing, not every device  1304 , or communications link  1316 ,  1322 ,  1328 , or  1332  is labeled. The backbone links  1302  may include any number of wired or wireless technologies, and may be part of a local area network (LAN), a wide area network (WAN), or the Internet. Similar to  FIG. 12 , in embodiments, one or more of IoT devices  1304  (which may be the same or similar as IoT devices  1204  of  FIG. 12 ), GWs  1354 , and so forth, may be incorporated with embodiments described herein. In particular, the various devices shown by  FIG. 13  may correspond with the systems, devices, etc. discussed previously with regard to  FIGS. 1-11 . 
     The network topology  1300  may include any number of types of IoT networks, such as a mesh network  1356  using BLE links  1322 . Other IoT networks that may be present include a WLAN network  1358  using WiFi links  1328 , a cellular network  1360  using cellular links  1316 , and an LPWA network  1362  using LPWA links  1332 . Each of these IoT networks may provide opportunities for new developments, as described herein. For example, communications between IoT devices  1304 , such as over the backbone links  1302 , may be protected by a decentralized system for authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA). In a decentralized AAA system, distributed payment, credit, audit, authorization, and authentication systems may be implemented across interconnected heterogeneous infrastructure. This allows systems and networks to move towards autonomous operations. 
     In these types of autonomous operations, machines may contract for human resources and negotiate partnerships with other machine networks. This may allow the achievement of mutual objectives and balanced service delivery against outlined, planned service level agreements as well as achieve solutions that provide metering, measurements and traceability and trackability. The creation of new supply chain structures and methods may enable a multitude of services to be created, mined for value, and collapsed without any human involvement. 
     The IoT networks may be further enhanced by the integration of sensing technologies, such as sound, light, electronic traffic, facial and pattern recognition, smell, vibration, into the autonomous organizations. The integration of sensory systems may allow systematic and autonomous communication and coordination of service delivery against contractual service objectives, orchestration and quality of service (QoS) based swarming and fusion of resources. 
     The mesh network  1306  may be enhanced by systems that perform inline data-to-information transforms. For example, self-forming chains of processing resources comprising a multi-link network may distribute the transformation of raw data to information in an efficient manner, and the ability to differentiate between assets and resources and the associated management of each. Furthermore, the proper components of infrastructure and resource based trust and service indices may be inserted to improve the data integrity, quality, assurance and deliver a metric of data confidence. 
     The WLAN network  1358  uses systems that perform standards conversion to provide multi-standard connectivity, enabling IoT devices  1304  using different protocols to communicate. Further systems may provide seamless interconnectivity across a multi-standard infrastructure comprising visible Internet resources and hidden Internet resources. Communications in the cellular network  1360  may be enhanced by systems that offload data, extend communications to more remote devices, or both. The LPWA network  1362  may include systems that perform non-Internet protocol (IP) to IP interconnections, addressing, and routing. 
       FIG. 14  illustrates an arrangement  1400  of example cloud computing network, or cloud  1401 , in communication with a number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, in accordance with various embodiments. The cloud  1401  may represent the Internet, one or more cellular networks, a local area network (LAN) or a wide area network (WAN) including proprietary and/or enterprise networks for a company or organization, or combinations thereof. Cloud  1401  may correspond to cloud  1001  of  FIG. 10 . Components used for such communications system can depend at least in part upon the type of network and/or environment selected. Protocols and components for communicating via such networks are well known and will not be discussed herein in detail. However, it should be appreciated that cloud  1401  may be associated with network operator who owns or controls equipment and other elements necessary to provide network-related services, such as one or more base stations or access points, and one or more servers for routing digital data or telephone calls (for example, a core network or backbone network). 
     The IoT devices in  FIG. 14  may be the same or similar to the IoT devices  1204  of  FIG. 12  and the IoT UEs  101   x  of  FIG. 1 , and/or the edge compute nodes  2101  and data collector nodes  2102  of  FIGS. 2-5 . In addition, the various devices shown by  FIG. 14  may correspond with the systems, devices, etc. discussed previously with regard to  FIGS. 1-11 . The IoT devices may include any number of different types of devices, grouped in various combinations, such as IoT group  1406  that may include IoT devices that provide one or more services for a particular user, customer, organizations, etc. A service provider may deploy the IoT devices in the IoT group  1406  to a particular area (e.g., a geolocation, building, etc.) in order to provide the one or more services. In one example, the IoT group  306  may be a traffic control group where the IoT devices in the IoT group  1406  may include stoplights, traffic flow monitors, cameras, weather sensors, and the like, to provide traffic control and traffic analytics services for a particular municipality or other like entity. Similar to  FIGS. 12-10 , in embodiments, one or more of IoT devices  1414 - 1424 , GW  1410 , and so forth, may be incorporated with the various embodiments described herein, in particular, with references to  FIGS. 1-6 . For example, in some embodiments, the IoT group  1406 , or any of the IoT groups discussed herein, may include the components, devices, systems discussed with regard to  FIGS. 1-6 . 
     The IoT group  1406 , or other subgroups, may be in communication with the cloud  1401  through wireless links  1408 , such as LPWA links, and the like. Further, a wired or wireless sub-network  1412  may allow the IoT devices to communicate with each other, such as through a local area network, a wireless local area network, and the like. The IoT devices may use another device, such as a GW  1410  to communicate with the cloud  1401 . Other groups of IoT devices may include remote weather stations  1414 , local information terminals  1416 , alarm systems  1418 , automated teller machines  1420 , alarm panels  1422 , or moving vehicles, such as emergency vehicles  1424  or other vehicles  1426 , among many others. Each of these IoT devices may be in communication with other IoT devices, with servers  1404 , or both. In some embodiments, the servers  1404  correspond with the remote server(s)  130  discussed previously, and any of the aforementioned vehicles may correspond with UEs  101  discussed previously. 
     As can be seen from  FIG. 14 , a large number of IoT devices may be communicating through the cloud  1401 . This may allow different IoT devices to request or provide information to other devices autonomously. For example, the IoT group  1406  may request a current weather forecast from a group of remote weather stations  1414 , which may provide the forecast without human intervention. Further, an emergency vehicle  1424  may be alerted by an automated teller machine  1420  that a burglary is in progress. As the emergency vehicle  1424  proceeds towards the automated teller machine  1420 , it may access the traffic control group  1406  to request clearance to the location, for example, by lights turning red to block cross traffic at an intersection in sufficient time for the emergency vehicle  1424  to have unimpeded access to the intersection. 
     In another example, the IoT group  1406  may be an industrial control group (also referred to as a “connected factory”, an “industry 4.0” group, and the like) where the IoT devices in the IoT group  1406  may include machines or appliances with embedded IoT devices, radiofrequency identification (RFID) readers, cameras, client computer devices within a manufacturing plant, and the like, to provide production control, self-optimized or decentralized task management services, analytics services, etc. for a particular manufacturer or factory operator. In this example, the IoT group  1406  may communicate with the servers  1404  via GW  1410 , server(s)  1430 , and cloud  1401  to provide captured data, which may be used to provide performance monitoring and analytics to the manufacturer or factory operator. Additionally, where the GW  1410  or one or more of the server(s)  1430  is a MEC server  201 , the IoT group  1406  may communicate with the GW  1410  and/or one or more of the server(s)  1430  for distributed ML according to the various embodiments discussed herein. Furthermore, the IoT devices in the IoT group  1406  may communicate among each other, and/or with other IoT devices of other IoT groups, to make decisions on their own and to perform their tasks as autonomously as possible. 
     Clusters of IoT devices, such as the IoT groups depicted by  FIG. 14 , may be equipped to communicate with other IoT devices as well as with the cloud  1401 . This may allow the IoT devices to form an ad-hoc network between the devices, allowing them to function as a single device, which may be termed a fog device. This is discussed further with respect to  FIG. 12 . 
       FIG. 15  illustrates an arrangement  1500  of a cloud computing network, or cloud  1501 , in communication with a mesh network of IoT devices, which may be termed a fog device  1520  or fog  1520 , operating at the edge of the cloud  1501 , in accordance with various embodiments. Cloud  1501  may be the same or similar to cloud  1001  of  FIG. 10  and cloud  1401  of  FIG. 14 . In this example, the fog  1520  is a group of IoT devices at an intersection (e.g., and may include one or more IoT groups  1406  of  FIG. 14 ). The fog  1520  may be established in accordance with specifications released by the OpenFog Consortium (OFC), the Open Connectivity Foundation™ (OCF), among others. In some embodiments, the fog  1520  may be a tangle as defined by the IOTA foundation. Additionally, each of the IoT devices in the fog  1520  may correspond with the IoT UEs  101   x , edge compute nodes  2101 , data collector nodes  2102 , etc. discussed previously with regard to  FIGS. 1-5 . 
     In embodiments, fog computing systems, such as fog  1520 , may be mechanisms for bringing cloud computing functionality closer to data generators and consumers wherein various network devices run cloud application logic on their native architecture. Fog computing is a system-level horizontal architecture that distributes resources and services of computing, storage, control, and networking anywhere along the continuum from Cloud  1501  to Things (e.g., IoT devices  1504 ). 
     Fog computing systems may be used to perform low-latency computation/aggregation on the data while routing it to an edge cloud computing service (e.g., MEC server  201  in  FIG. 2 ) and/or a central cloud computing service (e.g., server(s)  130  in  FIG. 2 ) for performing heavy computations or computationally burdensome tasks. On the other hand, edge cloud computing consolidates human-operated, voluntary resources, as a cloud. These voluntary resource may include, inter-alia, UEs  101 , desktop PCs, tablets, smartphones, nano data centers, and the like. In various implementations, resources in the edge cloud may be in one to two-hop proximity to the IoT devices  1504  (e.g., UEs  101   x  in  FIG. 1 ), which may result in reducing overhead related to processing data and may reduce network delay. 
     In some embodiments, the fog  1520  may be a consolidation of IoT devices  1504  and/or networking devices, such as routers and switches, with high computing capabilities and the ability to run cloud application logic on their native architecture. Fog resources may be manufactured, managed, and deployed by cloud vendors, and may be interconnected with high speed, reliable links. Moreover, fog resources reside farther from the edge of the network when compared to edge systems but closer than a central cloud infrastructure. Fog devices are used to effectively handle computationally intensive tasks offloaded by edge resources. 
     In embodiments, the fog  1520  may operate at the edge of the cloud  1501 . The fog  1520  operating at the edge of the cloud  1501  may overlap or be subsumed into an edge network of the cloud  1501 . The edge network of the cloud  1501  may overlap with the fog  1520 , or become a part of the fog  1520 . Furthermore, the fog  1520  may be an edge-fog network that includes an edge layer and a fog layer. The edge layer of the edge-fog network includes a collection of loosely coupled, voluntary and human-operated resources (e.g., the aforementioned edge compute nodes or edge devices). The Fog layer resides on top of the edge layer and is a consolidation of networking devices such as the UEs  101  of  FIG. 1 . 
     Data may be captured, stored/recorded, and communicated among the IoT devices  1504  (or, for example, among the UEs  101  that have direct links  105  with one another as shown by  FIG. 1 ). Analysis of the traffic flow and control schemes may be implemented by aggregators  1526  that are in communication with the IoT devices  1504  (or UEs  101 ) and each other through a mesh network. The aggregators  1526  may be a type of IoT device  1504  and/or network appliance. In the example of  FIG. 1 , the aggregators may be (R)AN nodes  111 ,  106 , or one or more designated UEs  101 . Data may be uploaded to the cloud  1501  (e.g., server(s)  130  in  FIG. 2 ) via the aggregator, and commands can be received from the cloud  1501  through GWs  1524  that are in communication with the IoT devices  1504  and the aggregators  1526  through the mesh network. Unlike the traditional cloud computing model, in some implementations, the cloud  1501  may have little or no computational capabilities and only serves as a repository for archiving data recorded and processed by the fog  1520 . In these implementations, the cloud  1501  centralized data storage system and provides reliability and access to data by the computing resources in the fog  1520  and/or edge devices. Being at the core of the architecture, the Data Store of the cloud  1501  is accessible by both Edge and Fog layers of the aforementioned edge-fog network. 
     Similar to  FIGS. 12-14 , in embodiments, one or more of IoT devices  1504 , aggregators  1526 , and so forth, may be incorporated with the various embodiments described herein, in particular, with references to  FIGS. 1-11 . For example, and with reference to  FIG. 1 , the links  105 ,  103  that are enabled by use of the communication technology may allow the UEs  101  to form a cloud network or fog  1520  for collaborating. Examples of UE  101  collaboration include performing computations for partial gradients as discussed herein. Clusters of the UEs  101  are equipped to communicate with one another, as well as with stationary infrastructure equipment  111 ,  900  to form ad-hoc networks allowing the UEs  101  to function as a fog  1520 . 
     Any number of communications links may be used in the fog  1520 . Shorter-range links  1522 , for example, compatible with IEEE 802.15.4 may provide local communications between IoT devices that are proximate to one another or other devices. Longer-range links  1522 , for example, compatible with LPWA standards, may provide communications between the IoT devices and the GWs  1524 . To simplify the diagram, not every communications link  1522  is labeled with a reference number. 
     The fog  1520  may be considered to be a massively interconnected network wherein a number of IoT devices are in communications with each other, for example, by the communication links  1522 . The network may be established using the open interconnect consortium (OIC) standard specification 1.0 released by the Open Connectivity Foundation™ (OCF) on Dec. 23, 2015. This standard allows devices to discover each other and establish communications for interconnects. Other interconnection protocols may also be used, including, for example, the AllJoyn protocol from the AllSeen alliance, the optimized link state routing (OLSR) Protocol, or the better approach to mobile ad-hoc networking (B.A.T.M.A.N), among many others. 
     Communications from any IoT device may be passed along the most convenient path between any of the IoT devices to reach the GWs  1524 . In these networks, the number of interconnections may provide substantial redundancy, allowing communications to be maintained, even with the loss of a number of IoT devices. 
     Not all of the IoT devices may be permanent members of the fog  1520 . In the example of  FIG. 15 , three transient IoT devices have joined the fog  1520 , a first mobile device  1512 , a second mobile device  1514 , and a third mobile device  1516 . The fog  1520  may be presented to clients in the cloud  1501 , such as the server  1534 , as a single device located at the edge of the cloud  1501 . In this example, the control communications to specific resources in the fog  1520  may occur without identifying any specific IoT device  1504  within the fog  1520 . Accordingly, if any IoT device  1504  fails, other IoT devices  1504  may be able to discover and control a resource. For example, the IoT devices  1504  may be wired so as to allow any one of the IoT devices  1504  to control measurements, inputs, outputs, etc., for the other IoT devices  1504 . The aggregators  1526  may also provide redundancy in the control of the IoT devices  1504  and other functions of the fog  1520 . 
     In some examples, the IoT devices may be configured using an imperative programming style, e.g., with each IoT device having a specific function and communication partners. However, the IoT devices forming the fog  1520  may be configured in a declarative programming style, allowing the IoT devices to reconfigure their operations and communications, such as to determine needed resources in response to conditions, queries, and device failures. This may be performed as transient IoT devices, such as the mobile devices  1512 ,  1514 ,  1516 , join the fog  1520 . As transient or mobile IoT devices enter or leave the fog  1520 , the fog  1520  may reconfigure itself to include those devices. This may be performed by forming a temporary group of the mobile devices  1512  and  1514  and the third mobile device  1516  to control or otherwise communicate with the IoT devices  1504 . If one or both of the devices  1512 ,  1514  are autonomous, the temporary group may provide instructions to the devices  1512 ,  1514 . As the transient devices  1512 ,  1514 , and  1516 , leave the vicinity of the fog  1520 , it may reconfigure itself to eliminate those IoT devices  1504  from the network. The fog  1520  may also divide itself into functional units, such as the IoT devices  1504  and other IoT devices proximate to a particular area or geographic feature, or other IoT devices that perform a particular function. This type of combination may enable the formation of larger IoT constructs using resources from the fog  1520 . 
     As illustrated by the fog  1520 , the organic evolution of IoT networks is central to maximizing the utility, availability and resiliency of IoT implementations. Further, the example indicates the usefulness of strategies for improving trust and therefore security. The local identification of devices may be important in implementations, as the decentralization of identity ensures a central authority cannot be exploited to allow impersonation of objects that may exist within the IoT networks. Further, local identification lowers communication overhead and latency. 
     4. Examples 
     Some non-limiting examples are as follows. The following examples pertain to further embodiments, and specifics in the examples may be used anywhere in one or more embodiments discussed previously. Any of the following examples may be combined with any other example or any embodiment discussed herein. 
     Example 1 includes an apparatus for providing distributed machine learning (ML) services in a heterogeneous computing environment, the apparatus comprising: processor circuitry arranged to partition an encoded training dataset into a set of training data partitions, and assign each training data partition of the set of training data partitions to corresponding compute nodes of a plurality of heterogeneous compute nodes of the heterogeneous computing environment available to perform computations for a distributed ML training process, wherein a number of data points included in each training data partition is based on operational parameters of the corresponding heterogeneous compute nodes; and communication circuitry communicatively coupled with the processor circuitry, the communication circuitry arranged to transmit each training data partition to the corresponding heterogeneous compute nodes, and receive computed partial gradients from a subset of the corresponding heterogeneous compute nodes, and wherein the processor circuitry is arranged to determine updated ML training parameters based on an aggregation of the received computed partial gradients, and wherein the communication circuitry is arranged to transmit the updated ML training parameters to the corresponding heterogeneous compute nodes. 
     Example 2 includes the apparatus of example 1 and/or some other example(s) herein, further comprising: encoding circuitry coupled with the processor circuitry, the encoding circuitry is arranged to encode a raw dataset into the encoded training dataset with a number of extra data points based on a coding redundancy value. 
     Example 2.5 includes the apparatus of example 2 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the number of extra data points is a same number of data points as a number of data points in the raw dataset, or the number of extra data points is greater than the number of data points in the raw dataset 
     Example 3 includes the apparatus of example 2 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the processor circuitry is arranged to determine the coding redundancy value based on the operational parameters and a load allocation criterion. 
     Example 4 includes the apparatus of example 3 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the load allocation criterion is based on a minimax criterion, the minimax criterion being a value that maximizes a number of partial gradients to be received from each heterogeneous compute node while minimizing an epoch time. 
     Example 4.5 includes the apparatus of example 3 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the load allocation criterion is based on a desired computation time for computation of the partial gradients, wherein the computation time at each of the corresponding heterogeneous compute nodes is based on one or more deterministic components of respective operational parameters of the corresponding heterogeneous compute nodes and one or more stochastic components of the respective operational parameters. 
     Example 5 includes the apparatus of examples 2-4 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the encoding circuitry is arranged to encode the raw dataset using a random linear encoder, wherein the encoding circuitry is arranged to operate the random linear encoder to select each element of a random generator matrix independently from a normal distribution or from a Bernoulli distribution, and wherein the random generator matrix has c number of rows and m number of columns such that any m subset of c rows is a near-orthogonal m×m matrix, where c&gt;m≥1. 
     Example 5.5 includes the apparatus of examples 2-5 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the coding redundancy value is equal to a number of training data partitions in the set of training data partitions. 
     Example 6 includes the apparatus of examples 1-5.5 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the operational parameters of the corresponding heterogeneous compute nodes include network conditions experienced by the corresponding heterogeneous compute nodes and compute node capabilities of the corresponding heterogeneous compute nodes, and wherein the communication circuitry is arranged to receive, from the corresponding heterogeneous compute nodes, an indication of the operational parameters of the corresponding heterogeneous compute nodes. 
     Example 7 includes the apparatus of example 6 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the compute node capabilities include one or more of a processor speed of the corresponding heterogeneous compute nodes, memory utilization of the corresponding heterogeneous compute nodes, memory or storage size of the corresponding heterogeneous compute nodes, link adaptation capabilities of the corresponding heterogeneous compute nodes, available battery power of the corresponding heterogeneous compute nodes, a battery power budget of the corresponding heterogeneous compute nodes, an average computation time per workload, and an achievable data rate per channel usage of the corresponding compute heterogeneous nodes. 
     Example 8 includes the apparatus of examples 1-7 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the apparatus is a System-On-Chip (SoC) or a Multi-Chip Package (MCP) in a Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) server. 
     Example 9 includes an apparatus for providing distributed machine learning (ML) services in a heterogeneous computing environment, the apparatus comprising: processor circuitry arranged to determine, for each compute node of a plurality of heterogeneous compute nodes of the heterogeneous computing environment available to perform computations for a distributed ML training process, a coding redundancy indicating a number of encoded data points, which are generated from uncoded data available at each compute node, to be included in an encoded training data partition based on operational parameters of each heterogeneous compute node; and communication circuitry communicatively coupled with the processor circuitry, the communication circuitry arranged to transmit an indication of the number of data points and the coding redundancy to each heterogeneous compute node, and receive encoded training data partitions from a set of the plurality of heterogeneous compute nodes, and receive first partial gradients based on the uncoded data from the set of the plurality of compute nodes, and wherein the processor circuitry is arranged to determine second partial gradients based on the encoded training data partitions, and determine updated ML training parameters based on an aggregation of the first partial gradients with the second partial gradients, and the communication circuitry is arranged to transmit the updated ML training parameters and the aggregated partial gradients to corresponding heterogeneous compute nodes. 
     Example 10 includes the apparatus of example 9 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the processor circuitry is arranged to determine the coding redundancy based on the operational parameters and a load allocation criterion. 
     Example 11 includes the apparatus of example 10 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the load allocation criterion is based on a minimax criterion, the minimax criterion being a value that maximizes a number of partial gradients to be received from each compute node while minimizing a desired epoch time, wherein the desired epoch time is based on a computation time for computation of the partial gradients at each heterogeneous compute node. 
     Example 11.5 includes the apparatus of example 11 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein, the computation time being based on one or more deterministic components of the operational parameters of each heterogeneous compute node and one or more stochastic components of the operational parameters of each heterogeneous compute node. 
     Example 12 includes the apparatus of examples 10-11 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the processor circuitry is arranged to determine the coding redundancy based on a desired number of encoded data points to be accepted for determination of the second partial gradients. 
     Example 13 includes the apparatus of examples 9-12 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the communication circuitry is arranged to transmit a probability value with the indication of the number of data points and the coding redundancy to each compute node, wherein the probability value indicates a probability that the first partial gradient will be received within a predetermined epoch time, and the probability value is to weight the uncoded data available at each compute node prior to the uncoded data being encoded. 
     Example 14 includes the apparatus of examples 10-13 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the number of data points to be included in the encoded training data partition as indicated by the coding redundancy is a fraction of a total number of uncoded data points distributed across all computing nodes of the plurality of heterogeneous compute nodes. 
     Example 15 includes the apparatus of examples 9-14 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the operational parameters of the corresponding compute nodes include network conditions experienced by the corresponding compute nodes and compute node capabilities of the corresponding compute nodes, and the communication circuitry is arranged to receive, from the corresponding compute nodes, an indication of the operational parameters of the corresponding compute nodes. 
     Example 16 includes the apparatus of example 15 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the compute node capabilities include one or more of a processor speed, memory utilization, memory or storage size, link adaptation capabilities, available battery power, a battery power budget, an average computation time per workload, and an achievable data rate per channel usage. 
     Example 16 includes the apparatus of examples 9-16.5 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the apparatus is a System-On-Chip (SoC) or a Multi-Chip Package (MCP) in a Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) server. 
     Example 17 includes at least one computer-readable storage medium (CRSM) comprising data, the data to create, manufacture, or produce instructions, wherein execution of the instructions is to cause an edge compute node of a heterogeneous computing environment to: identify a training dataset partition on which to perform computations of a distributed machine learning (ML) training process, wherein a number of data points included in the training data partition is based on operational parameters of the edge compute node, and the training data partition is among a plurality of training data partitions; perform the computations on the data points in the training dataset partition to obtain a partial gradient; send the computed partial gradient to a master node in the heterogeneous computing environment. 
     Example 18 includes the CRSM of example 17 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein execution of the instructions is to cause the edge compute node to: obtain, from the master node, updated ML training parameters based on an aggregation of a plurality of computed partial gradients, wherein each computed partial gradient of the plurality of computed partial gradients are based on a corresponding one of the plurality of training data partitions; and perform the computations on the data points in the training dataset partition to obtain a partial gradient. 
     Example 19 includes the CRSM of examples 17-18 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein execution of the instructions is to cause the edge compute node to: obtain, from the master node, the training data partition and an indication of the computations of the distributed ML training process to be performed on the data points in the training data partition. 
     Example 20 includes the CRSM of examples 17-18 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the training data partition is locally accessible by the edge compute node, and execution of the instructions is to cause the edge compute node to: encode the data points of the training data partition and at least one extra data point based on a coding redundancy value to obtain an encoded dataset, wherein the coding redundancy value is based at least on the operational parameters of the edge compute node. 
     Example 21 includes the CRSM of example 20 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the coding redundancy value is also based on a load allocation criterion, wherein the load allocation criterion is based on a desired computation time for computation of the partial gradient. 
     Example 22 includes the CRSM of examples 20-21 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein execution of the instructions is to cause the edge compute node to: compute the partial gradient based on a random generator matrix and a weight matrix, wherein the weight matrix is based on a probability that the edge compute node will be unable to provide the partial gradient to the master node within a desired period of time. 
     Example 23 includes the CRSM of examples 17-22 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein execution of the instructions is to cause the edge compute node to: identify the operational parameters of the edge compute node, the operational parameters of the edge compute node at least including network conditions experienced by the edge compute node and computational capacity of the edge compute node; and send an indication of the identified operational parameters to the master node. 
     Example 24 includes the CRSM of example 23 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the operational parameters of the edge compute node also include one or more compute node capabilities of the edge compute node, wherein the compute node capabilities include one or more of a processor speed, memory utilization, memory or storage size, link adaptation capabilities, available battery power, a battery power budget, an average computation time per workload, and an achievable data rate per channel usage. 
     Example 25 includes the CRSM of examples 17-24 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the edge compute node is one of a desktop computer, a smartphone, a tablet computer, an Internet of Things (IoT) device, a remote sensor, a multi-access edge computing (MEC) server, and a Radio Access Network (RAN) node. 
     Example 26 includes a method for providing distributed machine learning (ML) services in a heterogeneous computing environment, the method comprising: partitioning, by a master node, an encoded training dataset into a set of training data partitions; assigning, by the master node, each training data partition of the set of training data partitions to corresponding compute nodes of a plurality of heterogeneous compute nodes of the heterogeneous computing environment available to perform computations for a distributed ML training process, wherein a number of data points included in each training data partition is based on operational parameters of the corresponding heterogeneous compute nodes; transmitting, by the master node, each training data partition to the corresponding heterogeneous compute nodes; receiving, by the master node, computed partial gradients from a subset of the corresponding heterogeneous compute nodes; determining, by the master node, updated ML training parameters based on an aggregation of the received computed partial gradients; and transmitting, by the master node, the updated ML training parameters to the corresponding heterogeneous compute nodes. 
     Example 27 includes the method of example 26 and/or some other example(s) herein, further comprising: encoding, by the master node, a raw dataset into the encoded training dataset with a number of extra data points based on a coding redundancy value, wherein the number of extra data points is a same number of data points as a number of data points in the raw dataset, or the number of extra data points is greater than the number of data points in the raw dataset. 
     Example 28 includes the method of example 27 and/or some other example(s) herein, further comprising: determining, by the master node, the coding redundancy value based on the operational parameters and a load allocation criterion. 
     Example 29 includes the method of example 28 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the load allocation criterion is based on a minimax criterion, the minimax criterion being a value that maximizes a number of partial gradients to be received from each heterogeneous compute node while minimizing an epoch time. 
     Example 29.5 includes the method of example 28 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the load allocation criterion is based on a desired computation time for computation of the partial gradients, wherein the computation time at each of the corresponding heterogeneous compute nodes is based on one or more deterministic components of respective operational parameters of the corresponding heterogeneous compute nodes and one or more stochastic components of the respective operational parameters. 
     Example 30 includes the method of examples 27-29.5 and/or some other example(s) herein, further comprising: encoding, by the master node, the raw dataset using a random linear encoder, including operating, by the master node, the random linear encoder to select each element of a random generator matrix independently from a normal distribution or from a Bernoulli distribution, and wherein the random generator matrix has c number of rows and m number of columns such that any m subset of c rows is a near-orthogonal m×m matrix, where c&gt;m≥1. 
     Example 31 includes the method of examples 26-30 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the operational parameters of the corresponding heterogeneous compute nodes include network conditions experienced by the corresponding heterogeneous compute nodes and compute node capabilities of the corresponding heterogeneous compute nodes, and the method comprises receiving, by the master node from the corresponding heterogeneous compute nodes, an indication of the operational parameters of the corresponding heterogeneous compute nodes. 
     Example 32 includes the method of example 31 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the compute node capabilities include one or more of a processor speed of the corresponding heterogeneous compute nodes, memory utilization of the corresponding heterogeneous compute nodes, memory or storage size of the corresponding heterogeneous compute nodes, link adaptation capabilities of the corresponding heterogeneous compute nodes, available battery power of the corresponding heterogeneous compute nodes, a battery power budget of the corresponding heterogeneous compute nodes, an average computation time per workload, and an achievable data rate per channel usage of the corresponding compute heterogeneous nodes. 
     Example 33 includes the method of examples 26-32 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the plurality of heterogeneous compute nodes comprise one or more desktop computers, one or more smartphones, one or more tablet computers, one or more Internet of Things (IoT) devices, one or more remote sensors, one or more multi-access edge computing (MEC) servers, and/or one or more Radio Access Network (RAN) nodes; and the master node comprises one or more MEC servers or a cluster of cloud computing resources provided by a cloud computing service. 
     Example 34 includes a method for providing distributed machine learning (ML) services in a heterogeneous computing environment, the method comprising: determining, by a master node for each compute node of a plurality of heterogeneous compute nodes of the heterogeneous computing environment available to perform computations for a distributed ML training process, a coding redundancy indicating a number of encoded data points, which are generated from uncoded data available at each compute node, to be included in an encoded training data partition based on operational parameters of each heterogeneous compute node; transmitting, by the master node, an indication of the number of data points and the coding redundancy to each heterogeneous compute node; receiving, by the master node, encoded training data partitions from a set of the plurality of heterogeneous compute nodes; determining, by the master node, second partial gradients based on the encoded training data partitions; receiving, by the master node, first partial gradients based on the uncoded data partitions from the set of the plurality of compute nodes; determining, by the master node, updated ML training parameters based on an aggregation of the first partial gradients with the second partial gradients; and transmitting, by the master node, the updated ML training parameters and the aggregated partial gradients to corresponding heterogeneous compute nodes. 
     Example 35 includes the method of example 34 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the method comprises determining, by the master node, the coding redundancy based on the operational parameters and a load allocation criterion. 
     Example 36 includes the method of example 35 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the load allocation criterion is based on a minimax criterion, the minimax criterion being a value that maximizes a number of partial gradients to be received from each compute node while minimizing a desired epoch time, wherein the desired epoch time is based on a computation time for computation of the partial gradients at each heterogeneous compute node, the computation time being based on one or more deterministic components of the operational parameters of each heterogeneous compute node and one or more stochastic components of the operational parameters of each heterogeneous compute node. 
     Example 37 includes the method of example 35 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the method comprises determining, by the master node, the coding redundancy based on a desired number of encoded data points to be accepted for determination of the second partial gradients. 
     Example 38 includes the method of example 34 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the method comprises transmitting, by the master node, a probability value with the indication of the number of data points and the coding redundancy to each compute node, wherein the probability value indicates a probability that the first partial gradient will be received within a predetermined epoch time, and the probability value is to weight the uncoded data available at each compute node prior to the uncoded data being encoded. 
     Example 39 includes the method of example 35 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the number of data points to be included in the encoded training data partition indicated by the coding redundancy is a fraction of a total number of uncoded data points distributed across all computing nodes of the plurality of heterogeneous compute nodes. 
     Example 40 includes the method of example 34 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the operational parameters of the corresponding compute nodes include network conditions experienced by the corresponding compute nodes and compute node capabilities of the corresponding compute nodes, and wherein the method comprises receiving, by the master node from the corresponding compute nodes, an indication of the operational parameters of the corresponding compute nodes. 
     Example 40.5 includes the method of example 40 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the compute node capabilities include one or more of a processor speed, memory utilization, memory or storage size, link adaptation capabilities, available battery power, a battery power budget, an average computation time per workload, and an achievable data rate per channel usage. 
     Example 41 includes the method of examples 34-40.5 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the plurality of heterogeneous compute nodes comprise one or more desktop computers, one or more smartphones, one or more tablet computers, one or more Internet of Things (IoT) devices, one or more remote sensors, one or more multi-access edge computing (MEC) servers, and/or one or more Radio Access Network (RAN) nodes; and the master node comprises one or more MEC servers or a cluster of cloud computing resources provided by a cloud computing service. 
     Example 42 includes a method for providing distributed machine learning (ML) computations in a heterogeneous computing environment, the method comprising: identifying, by an edge compute node, a training dataset partition on which to perform computations of a distributed machine learning (ML) training process, wherein a number of data points included in the training data partition is based on operational parameters of the edge compute node, and the training data partition is among a plurality of training data partitions; performing, by the edge compute node, the computations on the data points in the training dataset partition to obtain a partial gradient; and transmitting, by the edge compute node, the computed partial gradient to a master node in the heterogeneous computing environment. 
     Example 43 includes the method of example 42 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the method comprises: obtaining, by the edge compute node from the master node, updated ML training parameters based on an aggregation of a plurality of computed partial gradients, wherein each computed partial gradient of the plurality of computed partial gradients are based on a corresponding one of the plurality of training data partitions; and performing, by the edge compute node from the master node, the computations on the data points in the training dataset partition to obtain a partial gradient. 
     Example 44 includes the method of example 42 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the method comprises: obtaining, by the edge compute node from the master node from the master node, the training data partition and an indication of the computations of the distributed ML training process to be performed on the data points in the training data partition. 
     Example 45 includes the method of example 42 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the training data partition is locally accessible by the edge compute node, and the method comprises: encoding, by the edge compute node from the master node, the data points of the training data partition and at least one extra data point based on a coding redundancy value to obtain an encoded dataset, wherein the coding redundancy value is based at least on the operational parameters of the edge compute node. 
     Example 46 includes the method of example 45 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the coding redundancy value is also based on a load allocation criterion, and the load allocation criterion is based on a desired computation time for computation of the partial gradient. 
     Example 47 includes the method of example 45 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the method comprises: computing, by the edge compute node from the master node, the partial gradient based on a random generator matrix and a weight matrix, wherein the weight matrix is based on a probability that the edge compute node will be unable to provide the partial gradient to the master node within a desired period of time. 
     Example 48 includes the method of example 42 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the method comprises: identifying, by the edge compute node from the master node, the operational parameters of the edge compute node, the operational parameters of the edge compute node at least including network conditions experienced by the edge compute node and computational capacity of the edge compute node; and transmitting, by the edge compute node from the master node, an indication of the identified operational parameters to the master node. 
     Example 49 includes the method of example 48 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the operational parameters of the edge compute node also include one or more compute node capabilities of the edge compute node, wherein the compute node capabilities include one or more of a processor speed, memory utilization, memory or storage size, link adaptation capabilities, available battery power, a battery power budget, an average computation time per workload, and an achievable data rate per channel usage. 
     Example 50 includes the method of examples 42-49 and/or some other example(s) herein, wherein the edge compute node is one of a desktop computer, a smartphone, a tablet computer, an Internet of Things (IoT) device, a remote sensor, a multi-access edge computing (MEC) server, and a Radio Access Network (RAN) node, and the master node comprises one or more MEC servers or a cluster of cloud computing resources provided by a cloud computing service. 
     Example 51 may include an apparatus comprising means to perform one or more elements of a method described in or related to any of examples 1-50, or any other method or process described in the present disclosure. 
     Example 52 may include one or more non-transitory computer-readable media comprising instructions to cause an electronic device, upon execution of the instructions by one or more processors of the electronic device, to perform one or more elements of a method described in or related to any of examples 1-50, or any other method or process described in the present disclosure. 
     Example 53 may include an apparatus comprising logic, modules, or circuitry to perform one or more elements of a method described in or related to any of examples 1-50, or any other method or process described in the present disclosure. 
     Example 54 includes a method, technique, or process as described in or related to any of examples 1-50, or portions or parts thereof, or otherwise described in the present disclosure. 
     Example 55 includes an apparatus comprising: one or more processors and one or more computer-readable media comprising instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform the method, techniques, or process as described in or related to any of examples 1-50, or portions thereof, or otherwise described in the present disclosure. The one or more computer-readable media may be one transitory or non-transitory computer-readable media. 
     Example 56 includes at least one transitory or non-transitory computer-readable storage medium comprising data, wherein the data is to create, manufacture, or otherwise produce instructions, wherein execution of the instructions is to cause a computing device or computing system to perform the method, techniques, or process as described in or related to any of examples 1-50, or portions thereof, or otherwise described in the present disclosure. 
     Example 57 includes a signal as described in or related to any of examples 1-50, or portions or parts thereof, or otherwise described in the present disclosure. 
     Example 58 includes a signal in a wireless network as shown and described in the present disclosure, or otherwise described in the present disclosure. 
     Example 59 includes a method of communicating in a wireless network as shown and described in the present disclosure. 
     Example 60 includes a system for providing wireless communication as shown and described in the present disclosure. 
     Example 61 includes a device for providing wireless communication as shown and described in the present disclosure. 
     Example 62 includes a packet, frame, segment, protocol data unit (PDU), or message as described in or related to any of examples 1-50, or portions or parts thereof, or otherwise described in the present disclosure. 
     The present disclosure has been described with reference to flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams of methods, apparatus (systems), and/or computer program products according to embodiments of the present disclosure. In the drawings, some structural or method features may be shown in specific arrangements and/or orderings. However, it should be appreciated that such specific arrangements and/or orderings may not be required. Rather, in some embodiments, such features may be arranged in a different manner and/or order than shown in the illustrative figures. Additionally, the inclusion of a structural or method feature in a particular figure is not meant to imply that such feature is required in all embodiments and, in some embodiments, may not be included or may be combined with other features. 
     It will be understood that each block of the flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, and combinations of blocks in the flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, may be implemented in hardware, firmware, software, or any combination thereof. The disclosed embodiments may be implemented as a computer process, a computing system, or as an article of manufacture such as a computer program product of computer readable media. The computer program product may include one or more transitory or non-transitory machine-readable (e.g., computer-readable) media comprising encoded computer program instructions for executing the computer process, which is readable and/or executable by one or more processors of a computer system. The machine-readable storage medium may be embodied as any storage device, mechanism, or other physical structure for storing or transmitting information in a form readable by a machine (e.g., a volatile or non-volatile memory, a media disc, or other media device). These computer program instructions may be provided to a processor of a general purpose computer, special purpose computer, or other programmable data processing apparatus to produce a machine, such that the instructions, which execute via the processor of the computer or other programmable data processing apparatus, create means for implementing the functions/acts specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block or blocks. These computer program instructions may also be stored in a computer-readable medium that can direct a computer or other programmable data processing apparatus to function in a particular manner, such that the instructions stored in the computer-readable medium produce an article of manufacture including instruction means which implement the function/act specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block or blocks. The computer program instructions may also be loaded onto a computer or other programmable data processing apparatus to cause a series of operational steps to be performed on the computer or other programmable apparatus to produce a computer implemented process such that the instructions which execute on the computer or other programmable apparatus provide processes for implementing the functions/acts specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block or blocks. 
     The flowchart and block diagrams in the figures illustrate the architecture, functionality, and operation of possible implementations of systems, methods and computer program products according to various embodiments of the present disclosure. In this regard, each block in the flowchart or block diagrams may represent a module, segment, or portion of code, which comprises one or more executable instructions for implementing the specified logical function(s). It should also be noted that, in some alternative implementations, the functions noted in the block may occur out of the order noted in the figures. For example, two blocks shown in succession may, in fact, be executed substantially concurrently, or the blocks may sometimes be executed in the reverse order, depending upon the functionality involved. It will also be noted that each block of the block diagrams and/or flowchart illustration, and combinations of blocks in the block diagrams and/or flowchart illustration, can be implemented by special purpose hardware-based systems that perform the specified functions or acts, or combinations of special purpose hardware and computer instructions. 
     The terminology used herein is for the purpose of describing particular embodiments only and is not intended to be limiting of the disclosure. As used herein, the singular forms “a,” “an” and “the” are intended to include plural forms as well, unless the context clearly indicates otherwise. It will be further understood that the terms “comprises” and/or “comprising,” when used in this specification, specific the presence of stated features, integers, steps, operations, elements, and/or components, but do not preclude the presence or addition of one or more other features, integers, steps, operation, elements, components, and/or groups thereof. 
     For the purposes of the present disclosure, the phrase “A and/or B” means (A), (B), or (A and B). For the purposes of the present disclosure, the phrase “A, B, and/or C” means (A), (B), (C), (A and B), (A and C), (B and C), or (A, B and C). The description may use the phrases “in an embodiment,” or “In some embodiments,” which may each refer to one or more of the same or different embodiments. Furthermore, the terms “comprising,” “including,” “having,” and the like, as used with respect to embodiments of the present disclosure, are synonymous. 
     The terms “coupled,” “communicatively coupled,” along with derivatives thereof are used herein. The term “coupled” may mean two or more elements are in direct physical or electrical contact with one another, may mean that two or more elements indirectly contact each other but still cooperate or interact with each other, and/or may mean that one or more other elements are coupled or connected between the elements that are said to be coupled with each other. The term “directly coupled” may mean that two or more elements are in direct contact with one another. The term “communicatively coupled” may mean that two or more elements may be in contact with one another by a means of communication including through a wire or other interconnect connection, through a wireless communication channel or ink, and/or the like. 
     As used herein, the term “circuitry” refers to a circuit or system of multiple circuits configured to perform a particular function in an electronic device. The circuit or system of circuits may be part of, or include one or more hardware components, such as a logic circuit, a processor (shared, dedicated, or group) and/or memory (shared, dedicated, or group), an Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC), a field-programmable device (FPD) (e.g., a field-programmable gate array (FPGA), a programmable logic device (PLD), a complex PLD (CPLD), a high-capacity PLD (HCPLD), a structured ASIC, or a programmable System on Chip (SoC)), digital signal processors (DSPs), etc., that are configured to provide the described functionality. In addition, the term “circuitry” may also refer to a combination of one or more hardware elements with the program code used to carry out the functionality of that program code. Some types of circuitry may execute one or more software or firmware programs to provide at least some of the described functionality. Such a combination of hardware elements and program code may be referred to as a particular type of circuitry. 
     As used herein, the term “processor circuitry” refers to, is part of, or includes circuitry capable of sequentially and automatically carrying out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations, or recording, storing, and/or transferring digital data. and/or any other device capable of executing or otherwise operating computer-executable instructions, such as program code, software modules, and/or functional processes. As used herein, the term “module” is one or more independent electronic circuits packaged onto a circuit board, SoC, System-in-Package (SiP), etc., configured to provide a basic function within a computer system. The term “module” may refer to, be part of, or include an FPD, ASIC, a processor (shared, dedicated, or group) and/or memory (shared, dedicated, or group) that execute one or more software or firmware programs, a combinational logic circuit, and/or other suitable components that provide the described functionality. 
     As used herein, the terms “instantiate,” “instantiation,” and the like may refer to the creation of an instance, and an “instance” may refer to a concrete occurrence of an object, which may occur, for example, during execution of program code. As used herein, a “database object”, “data object”, or the like may refer to any representation of information in a database that is in the form of an object, attribute-value pair (AVP), key-value pair (KVP), tuple, etc., and may include variables, data structures, functions, methods, classes, database records, database fields, database entities, associations between data and database entities (also referred to as a “relation”), and the like. 
     As used herein, the term “resource” refers to a physical or virtual device, a physical or virtual component within a computing environment, and/or a physical or virtual component within a particular device, such as computer devices, mechanical devices, memory space, processor/CPU time, processor/CPU usage, processor and accelerator loads, hardware time or usage, electrical power, input/output operations, ports or network sockets, channel/link allocation, throughput, memory usage, storage, network, database and applications, workload units, and/or the like. The term “network resource” may refer to a resource hosted by a remote entity (e.g., a cloud computing service) and accessible over a network. The term “on-device resource” may refer to a resource hosted inside a device and enabling access to the device, and thus, to the related physical entity. System resources may be considered as a set of coherent functions, network data objects or services, accessible through a server where such system resources reside on a single host or multiple hosts and are clearly identifiable. Additionally, a “virtualized resource” may refer to compute, storage, and/or network resources provided by virtualization infrastructure to an application, such as a multi-access edge applications 
     As used herein, the term “device” may refer to a physical entity embedded inside, or attached to, another physical entity in its vicinity, with capabilities to convey digital information from or to that physical entity. As used herein, the term “element” may refer to a unit that is indivisible at a given level of abstraction and has a clearly defined boundary, wherein an element may be any type of entity. As used herein, the term “controller” may refer to an element or entity that has the capability to affect a physical entity, such as by changing its state or causing the physical entity to move. As used herein, the term “entity” may refer to a distinct component of an architecture or device, or information transferred as a payload. 
     As used herein, the term “channel” may refer to any transmission medium, either tangible or intangible, which is used to communicate data or a data stream. The term “channel” may be synonymous with and/or equivalent to “communications channel,” “data communications channel,” “transmission channel,” “data transmission channel,” “access channel,” “data access channel,” “link,” “data link,” “carrier,” “radiofrequency carrier,” and/or any other like term denoting a pathway or medium through which data is communicated. Additionally, the term “link” may refer to a connection between two devices for the purpose of transmitting and receiving information. 
     As used herein, the term “computer system” refers to any type interconnected electronic devices, computer devices, or components thereof. Additionally, the term “computer system” and/or “system” may refer to various components of a computer that are communicatively coupled with one another, or otherwise organized to accomplish one or more functions. Furthermore, the term “computer system” and/or “system” may refer to multiple computer devices and/or multiple computing systems that are communicatively coupled with one another and configured to share computing and/or networking resources. As used herein, the term “architecture” may refer to a fundamental organization of a system embodied in its components, their relationships to one another, and to an environment, as well as to the principles guiding its design and evolution. As used herein, the term “appliance,” “computer appliance,” or the like, refers to a discrete hardware device with integrated program code (e.g., software or firmware) that is specifically or specially designed to provide a specific computing resource. A “virtual appliance” is a virtual machine image to be implemented by a hypervisor-equipped device that virtualizes or emulates a computer appliance or otherwise is dedicated to provide a specific computing resource. 
     As used herein, the term “interface circuitry” may refer to, is part of, or includes circuitry providing for the exchange of information between two or more components or devices. The term “interface circuitry” may refer to one or more hardware interfaces, for example, buses, input/output (I/O) interfaces, peripheral component interfaces, network interface cards, and/or the like. 
     The terms “master” and “slave” as used herein at least in some embodiments refers to a model of asymmetric communication or control where one device, process, element, or entity (the “master”) controls one or more other device, process, element, or entity (the “slaves”). The terms “master” and “slave” are used in this disclosure only for their technical meaning. The term “master” or “grandmaster” may be substituted with any of the following terms “main”, “source”, “primary”, “initiator”, “requestor”, “transmitter”, “host”, “maestro”, “controller”, “provider”, “producer”, “client”, “source”, “mix”, “parent”, “chief”, “manager”, “reference” (e.g., as in “reference clock” or the like), and/or the like. Additionally, the term “slave” may be substituted with any of the following terms “receiver”, “secondary”, “subordinate”, “replica”, target”, “responder”, “device”, “performer”, “agent”, “standby”, “consumer”, “peripheral”, “follower”, “server”, “child”, “helper”, “worker”, “node”, and/or the like. 
     The corresponding structures, material, acts, and equivalents of all means or steps plus function elements in the claims below are intended to include any structure, material or act for performing the function in combination with other claimed elements are specifically claimed. The embodiments were chosen and described in order to best explain the principles of the disclosure and the practical application, and to enable others of ordinary skill in the art to understand the disclosure for embodiments with various modifications as are suited to the particular use contemplated. The detailed description has been presented for purposes of illustration, but is not intended to be exhaustive or limited to the embodiments in the form disclosed. Modifications and variations will be apparent to those of ordinary skill without departing from the scope and spirit of the disclosure. Modifications and variations are possible in light of the above teachings or may be acquired from practice of various embodiments. It should be understood that there is no intent to limit the concepts of the present disclosure to the particular forms disclosed, and the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives consistent with the present disclosure and the appended claims.