A survey on mobile edge computing

TLDR

Mobile Edge Computing extends cloud services to the proximity of mobile subscribers by deploying cloud servers at base stations, thereby increasing operators’ responsibility for traffic control and service delivery. The paper surveys promising real‑time MEC application scenarios and identifies open research challenges for successful deployment. The authors review state‑of‑the‑art research efforts, present a taxonomy of MEC, and outline its key attributes. MEC reduces network latency, enables context‑aware services through real‑time RAN information, and supports computation offloading for intensive applications such as image processing and mobile gaming.

Abstract

Mobile Edge Computing is an emerging technology that provides cloud and IT services within the close proximity of mobile subscribers. Traditional telecom network operators perform traffic control flow (forwarding and filtering of packets), but in Mobile Edge Computing, cloud servers are also deployed in each base station. Therefore, network operator has a great responsibility in serving mobile subscribers. Mobile Edge Computing platform reduces network latency by enabling computation and storage capacity at the edge network. It also enables application developers and content providers to serve context-aware services (such as collaborative computing) by using real time radio access network information. Mobile and Internet of Things devices perform computation offloading for compute intensive applications, such as image processing, mobile gaming, to leverage the Mobile Edge Computing services. In this paper, some of the promising real time Mobile Edge Computing application scenarios are discussed. Later on, a state-of-the-art research efforts on Mobile Edge Computing domain is presented. The paper also presents taxonomy of Mobile Edge Computing, describing key attributes. Finally, open research challenges in successful deployment of Mobile Edge Computing are identified and discussed.