Exploiting Edge Computing in Internet of Space Things Networks: Dynamic and Static Server Placement

Abstract

Internet of Space Things (IoST), which extends the concept of Internet of Things (IoT) to space, has emerged as a new paradigm for offering monitoring/reconnaissance, in-space backhaul, and cyber-physical integration services. As Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites are increasingly deployed for global Internet services, Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) is being introduced into satellite networks to provision computing services by placing edge servers on satellites. Nevertheless, it is a nontrivial and unexplored task to efficiently choose edge server deployment locations from a large number of satellites. In this paper, we address this issue in detail towards average response delay minimization considering propagation delay, forwarding delay, and service delay. In particular, we formulate the dynamic server placement problem as well as the static server placement problem, and devise a genetic algorithm-based heuristic approach to solve them. Simulation results compare the two placement strategies with two benchmarks and demonstrate the performance of our genetic algorithm-based approach. Furthermore, a comparison between the dynamic placement and the static placement is investigated.