Edge computing infrastructure for 5G networks: a placement optimization solution

Coded computation has attracted great interests as a promising technique to cope with straggling computing nodes in mobile edge computing (MEC) networks. Contrary to the existing coded computation schemes developed with a fixed network topology, this paper studies a MDS coded computation for random networks. Specifically, we put forth maximum distance separable (MDS) coded task offloading and investigate its MDS coded computing gain by deriving the average successful retrieval probability with stochastic geometry in random wireless edge computing networks, where it encodes the original task into multiple equal and small sized MDS coded sub-tasks and offloads their subset to edge computing nodes for computation. We also identify a tradeoff between the latency in processing a sub-task at an edge node and the minimal number of edge nodes required to retrieve the original task output, according to the size of MDS coded sub-tasks. To efficiently control the tradeoff, we determine the desirable size of MDS coded sub-tasks in a semi-closed form to maximize the average successful retrieval probability for regime 1 and regime 2 networks, which correspond to the cases that communication latency is negligible compared to computation latency and that computation latency is negligible compared to communication latency, respectively, and develop an efficient algorithm with low search complexity for a general environment. Our numerical results reveal that the proposed scheme outperforms the other conventional task offloading schemes such as partial task offloading and replication task offloading in terms of average successful retrieval probability.

In this paper, we investigate a new mobile blockchain-enabled edge computing (MBEC) network, where mobile users can join the empowered process of public blockchains and meanwhile offload computation-intensive mining tasks to the mobile edge computing (MEC) server. However, the trustiness of the MEC server and the fairness of computation resources allocated by the MEC server for each user become key challenges. To tackle these challenges, we consider an untrusted MEC server and propose a nonce hash computing ordering (HCO) mechanism in MBEC networks. Then we formulate nonce hash computing demands of an individual user as a non-cooperative game that maximizes the personal revenue. Moreover, we also analyze the existence of Nash equilibrium of the non-cooperative game and design an alternating optimization algorithm to achieve the optimal nonce selection strategies for all users. With the proposed HCO mechanism, the MEC server can provide much fairer computation resources for all users, and we can achieve the optimal nonce strategies of hash computing demands by using the proposed alternating optimization algorithm. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed HCO mechanism can provide fairer computation resource allocation than the traditional weighted round-robin mechanism, and further verify the effectiveness of this alternating optimization algorithm.

With the development of mobile edge computing and neural network Deep Learning (DL), more and more scholars are studying the combination of the two. This paper mainly studies the application of mobile edge computing and neural network DL in IoT computing collaboration and data-aware routing algorithms. Therefore, this paper proposes the deployment options of MEC technology and ETSIMEC in mobile edge computing, combining mobile edge computing with DL, designs an optimization algorithm based on Markov decision process and feature expression learning, and then analyzes and optimizes IoT computing and VANET routing algorithm. In order to have a clearer direction for the optimization algorithm, this paper also designs the edge computing model training and experiment comparison, the DL algorithm comparison experiment, and the routing algorithm simulation experiment and performance analysis. Combined with the experimental results, it is optimized and compared with traditional IoT computing and routing algorithms. Finally, it is concluded that the computing efficiency of IoT computing based on edge computing and DL designed in this paper is 21.33% higher than that of traditional IoT computing. The efficiency of the routing algorithm based on edge computing and DL designed in this paper is 9.29% higher than that of the traditional routing algorithm.

To address the severe challenge from the rapid growth of number of downloads of contents via mobile network, it is imperative to develop efficient content caching scheme in mobile edge computing (MEC) networks, which can alleviate the heavy burden on backhaul links and reduce the delay for content delivery. However, the caching performance is highly related to the MEC server placement. In this paper, we jointly optimize the server placement problem and content caching problem in MEC networks. We propose a heuristic algorithm based on Kuhn-Munkres (KM) algorithm and greedy algorithm to minimize the average delay and average bandwidth resource usage. The simulation shows that our proposed algorithm can reduce delay and bandwidth, compared with other schemes.

The stochastic geometry-based modeling and analysis of large-scale mobile edge computing (MEC) networks are vital for the effective configuration of MEC networks. In this paper, we develop a meta-analytical framework for MEC-enabled heterogeneous networks with the communication-computation-aware (CCA) user association mechanism. Compared with the communication-based user association mechanisms in most existing works, the CCA user association mechanism can capture the impacts of network computation capability on the association process between the user and MEC access point, at the expense of dealing with the more complex coupling of communication and computing. Given the need for interference characterization, we first derive the essential prerequisite quantities (i.e., per-tier association probability, link distance distribution, interferer process intensity, etc.) to represent the computation-dependent interference model. Further, the moment and the meta distribution of the task success offloading probability are derived, based on which we investigate the task execution latency performance, including the communication latency, local computing latency, and edge computing latency. By theoretical analysis and simulation results, it is demonstrated that the proposed analytical framework can provide accurate fine-grained network information for the MEC-enabled HetNets. Moreover, we elaborate on the impacts of the edge computation capability on the network performance and reveal important tradeoffs of the performance metrics.

Recent advances in machine learning and deep learning have enabled many existing applications in smart cities, autonomous systems, and wearable devices. These applications often demand scalable real-time cognitive intelligence and on-the-spot decision making. Current computer systems have been customized for a cloud computing paradigm which often does not meet latency constraints and scalability requirements. To address the limitations of the cloud computing paradigm, the general trend is toward shifting the computation next to data producers at the edge. However, the edge computing paradigm is in the very early stages. Many system-level aspects of edge computing, including algorithms mapping and partitioning across edge computing resources (edge server, and edge nodes) are unknown. New research is required to understand and quantify design dimensions for edge computing.This paper presents a novel edge computing infrastructure for distributed real-time video analytics. This paper presents a holistic solution for co-designing application and edge infrastructure, including edge nodes and edge servers, to enable scalable real-time Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Deep Learning (DL) video analytics across many cameras. For experimental results and evaluation, we focus on the case study of object re-identification across many cameras, which is composed of object detection/classification (TinyYOLOv3), feature extraction, local re-identification, and global re-identification kernels. We evaluate the edge system under three different task mapping and resource allocation configurations. The results present that with the edge nodes (video cameras) more than 32, the only scalable solution is to perform detection/classification (TinyYOLOv3), feature extraction, local re-identification on the edge nodes next to cameras, and execute global re-identification on edge server.

The stochastic geometry modeling and analysis of mobile edge computing (MEC) networks contribute to the effective network configuration. Most prior works investigate the MEC network performance by spatial averaging the topological randomness, which can hide the differences among users and result in inaccurate analytical results. To address this limitation, an analytical framework is developed to study the meta distribution of the task offloading performance. We consider the Poisson MEC network where the users with dynamic task requests offload the tasks to the MEC server. Given the model, the <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$b$</tex-math></inline-formula> -th moment and the meta distribution of the success task offloading probability are first analyzed. Further, the exact yet convenient approximation of the MEC computing load is derived, based on which the edge computing delay is obtained. Our results demonstrate that the proposed meta-analytical framework allows tractable yet accurate analytical results, and provides additional fine-grained information about MEC-network planning.

Due to the urgent emergence of computation-intensive intelligent applications on end devices, edge computing has been put forward as an extension of cloud computing, to satisfy the low-latency requirements of these applications. To process heterogenous computation tasks on an edge node, the corresponding services should be placed in advance, including installing softwares and caching databases/libraries. Considering the limited storage space and computation resources on the edge node, services should be elaborately selected and deployed on the edge node and its computation resources should be carefully allocated to placed services, according to the arrivals of computation workloads. The joint service placement and computation resource allocation problem is particularly complicated, in terms of considering the stochastic arrivals of tasks, the additional latency incurred by service migration, and the waiting time of unprocessed tasks. Benefiting from deep reinforcement learning, we propose a novel approach based on parameterized deep Q networks to make the joint service placement and computation resource allocation decisions, with the objective of minimizing the total latency of tasks in a long term. Extensive simulations are conducted to evaluate the convergence and performance achieved by our proposed approach.

With the growth of real-time and latency-sensitive applications in the Internet of Everything (IoE), service placement cannot rely on cloud computing alone. In response to this need, several computing paradigms, such as Mobile Edge Computing (MEC), Ultra-dense Edge Computing (UDEC), and Fog Computing (FC), have emerged. These paradigms aim to bring computing resources closer to the end user, reducing delay and wasted backhaul bandwidth. One of the major challenges of these new paradigms is the limitation of edge resources and the dependencies between different service parts. Some solutions, such as microservice architecture, allow different parts of an application to be processed simultaneously. However, due to the ever-increasing number of devices and incoming tasks, the problem of service placement cannot be solved today by relying on rule-based deterministic solutions. In such a dynamic and complex environment, many factors can influence the solution. Optimization and Machine Learning (ML) are two well-known tools that have been used most for service placement. Both methods typically use a cost function. Optimization is usually a way to define the difference between the predicted and actual value, while ML aims to minimize the cost function. In simpler terms, ML aims to minimize the gap between prediction and reality based on historical data. Instead of relying on explicit rules, ML uses prediction based on historical data. Due to the NP-hard nature of the service placement problem, classical optimization methods are not sufficient. Instead, metaheuristic and heuristic methods are widely used. In addition, the ever-changing big data in IoE environments requires the use of specific ML methods. In this systematic review, we present a taxonomy of ML methods for the service placement problem. Our findings show that 96% of applications use a distributed microservice architecture. Also, 51% of the studies are based on on-demand resource estimation methods and 81% are multi-objective. This article also outlines open questions and future research trends. Our literature review shows that one of the most important trends in ML is reinforcement learning, with a 56% share of research.

Mobile edge computing (MEC) is envisioned as a prospective technology that supports latency-critical and computation-intensive applications by using storage and computation resources in network edges. The advantages of this technology are trapped in limited edge cloud resources, and one of the prime challenges is how to allocate available edge cloud resources to satisfy user requests. However, previous works usually optimize service (data& code) placement and request routing simultaneously within the same timescale, ignoring the fact that frequent service replacement will incur expensive operational expenses. In this paper, we jointly optimize service placement and request routing in the MEC network for data analysis applications, under the constraints of computation and storage resource. In particular, the Cloud Radio Access Network (C-RAN) architecture is applied to pool available resources and realize load balancing among edge clouds. In addition, we adopt a two timescale framework to reduce higher operating expenses caused by frequent cross-cloud service migration. Then, we develop a greedy-based approximation algorithm for service placement subproblem and a linear programming (LP) relaxation-based heuristic algorithm for request routing subproblem, respectively. Finally, the numerical results demonstrate that our proposed solution reaches 90% of the optimal performance in services homogeneous case and 76% in services heterogeneous case.

Mobile edge computing (MEC) networks have been recently adopted to accommodate the fast-growing number of mobile devices performing complicated tasks with limited hardware capability. Recently, edge nodes with communication, computation, and caching capacities are starting to be deployed in MEC networks. Due to the physical separation of these resources, efficient coordination and scheduling are important for efficient resource utilization and optimal network performance. In this paper, we study mobility load balancing for communication, computation, and caching-enabled heterogeneous MEC networks. Specifically, we propose to tackle this problem via a multi-agent deep reinforcement learning-based framework. Users served by overloaded edge nodes are handed over to less loaded ones, to minimize the load in the most loaded base station in the network. In this framework, the handover decision for each user is made based on the user’s own observation which comprises the user’s task at hand and the load status of the MEC network. Simulation results show that our proposed multi-agent deep reinforcement learning-based approach can reduce the time-average maximum load by up to 30% and the end-to-end delay by 50% compared to baseline algorithms.

In this article, a cooperative non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) mobile edge computing (MEC) network aided by reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) and simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) is considered, where the transmitters offload parts of their computing tasks to the MEC server via a relay and an RIS for enhancing the transmission environment. The goal is to minimize the task delay and energy consumption for the considered networks by jointly designing the RIS's reflection beamforming vector, the power splitting (PS) ratio, the power allocation factors of the relay, as well as the offloading transmit power and the offloading task ratio. To solve the proposed problems, an iterative optimization algorithm based on the successive convex approximation (SCA) method and the penalty method is proposed to decompose the formulated problems into two sub-problems. In particular, we jointly optimize the PS ratio, the power allocation coefficients and the edge computing resource based on the SCA technology, and then the penalty method is used to optimize the RIS's reflecting beamforming vector. Simulation results illustrate that the proposed NOMA-MEC networks aided by RIS and SWIPT are superior to the conventional orthogonal multiple access MEC networks with SWIPT aided by RIS in terms of task delay and energy consumption.

Autonomous vehicles and mobile edge computing’s confluence have raised an innovative model for immediate decision-making and improved computational abilities. But, enhancing vehicle management systems to guarantee effective enactment remains an important challenge. Present approaches regularly depend on intricate algorithms and multiple sensors, that result in improved computational overhead and potential latency. The current study resolves the present gap by offering a new hybrid framework, which synergistically mixes optimization algorithms and deep neural networks through the advantages of mobile edge computing. Precisely, this research presents a hybrid model for autonomous vehicle management by integrating a refined version of the RPO or Pelican Optimizer with deep neural networks attuned to mobile edge computing environments. The chief contributions of the present study have been threefold: (1) the improvement of a particular autonomous driving method optimized for mobile edge computing platforms; (2) the arrangement of an optimized MobileNet method employing the RPO algorithm that uses LiDAR sensor data for effective object recognition and path design; and (3) the construction of an indoor vehicle prototype by mean of a microcontroller and LiDAR sensors, after a comprehensive performance evaluation of inference models, and analyzing the trade-offs between input size and computational effectiveness. Experimental outcomes show the efficiency and reliability of the suggested hybrid model, through improving autonomous vehicle management and decision-making abilities within the mobile edge computing paradigm. The current study contributes to the enhancement of autonomous vehicle research and provides an innovative solution for effective and precise vehicle control within edge computing environments.

Edge computing: A survey

This chapter studies mobile edge computing (MEC) networks assisted by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). According to the application scenarios, we consider three roles for UAVs in MEC networks: exploiting MEC computing capabilities, serving as a computing server, and serving as a relay for computation offloading. Furthermore, the details for resource allocation and optimization are presented in the three scenarios of UAV-assisted MEC networks. In addition, we focus on the situation in which a UAV not only functions as an MEC server to inspect turbines on a wind farm, but also performs task computation. To facilitate wide applications of UAV-assisted MEC in practice, this chapter highlights the main implementation issues of UAV-assisted MEC, including optimal UAV deployment, wind models, and joint trajectory–computation performance optimization.