Cloudlet computing : recent advances, taxonomy, and challenges

A cloudlet is an emerging computing paradigm that is designed to meet the requirements and expectations of the Internet of things (IoT) and tackle the conventional limitations of a cloud (e.g., high latency). The idea is to bring computing resources (i.e., storage and processing) to the edge of a network. This article presents a taxonomy of cloudlet applications, outlines cloudlet utilities, and describes recent advances, challenges, and future research directions. Based on the literature, a unique taxonomy of cloudlet applications is designed. Moreover, a cloudlet computation offloading application for augmenting resource-constrained IoT devices, handling compute-intensive tasks, and minimizing the energy consumption of related devices is explored. This study also highlights the viability of cloudlets to support smart systems and applications, such as augmented reality, virtual reality, and applications that require high-quality service. Finally, the role of cloudlets in emergency situations, hostile conditions, and in the technological integration of future applications and services is elaborated in detail. © 2013 IEEE

A Taxonomy for Management and Optimization of Multiple Resources in Edge Computing

Edge computing is promoted to meet increasing performance needs of data-driven services using computational and storage resources close to the end devices, at the edge of the current network. To achieve higher performance in this new paradigm one has to consider how to combine the efficiency of resource usage at all three layers of architecture: end devices, edge devices, and the cloud. While cloud capacity is elastically extendable, end devices and edge devices are to various degrees resource-constrained. Hence, an efficient resource management is essential to make edge computing a reality. In this work, we first present terminology and architectures to characterize current works within the field of edge computing. Then, we review a wide range of recent articles and categorize relevant aspects in terms of 4 perspectives: resource type, resource management objective, resource location, and resource use. This taxonomy and the ensuing analysis is used to identify some gaps in the existing research. Among several research gaps, we found that research is less prevalent on data, storage, and energy as a resource, and less extensive towards the estimation, discovery and sharing objectives. As for resource types, the most well-studied resources are computation and communication resources. Our analysis shows that resource management at the edge requires a deeper understanding of how methods applied at different levels and geared towards different resource types interact. Specifically, the impact of mobility and collaboration schemes requiring incentives are expected to be different in edge architectures compared to the classic cloud solutions. Finally, we find that fewer works are dedicated to the study of non-functional properties or to quantifying the footprint of resource management techniques, including edge-specific means of migrating data and services.Comment: Accepted in the Special Issue Mobile Edge Computing of the Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing journa

Orchestrating Service Migration for Low Power MEC-Enabled IoT Devices

Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) is a key enabling technology for Fifth Generation (5G) mobile networks. MEC facilitates distributed cloud computing capabilities and information technology service environment for applications and services at the edges of mobile networks. This architectural modification serves to reduce congestion, latency, and improve the performance of such edge colocated applications and devices. In this paper, we demonstrate how reactive service migration can be orchestrated for low-power MEC-enabled Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Here, we use open-source Kubernetes as container orchestration system. Our demo is based on traditional client-server system from user equipment (UE) over Long Term Evolution (LTE) to the MEC server. As the use case scenario, we post-process live video received over web real-time communication (WebRTC). Next, we integrate orchestration by Kubernetes with S1 handovers, demonstrating MEC-based software defined network (SDN). Now, edge applications may reactively follow the UE within the radio access network (RAN), expediting low-latency. The collected data is used to analyze the benefits of the low-power MEC-enabled IoT device scheme, in which end-to-end (E2E) latency and power requirements of the UE are improved. We further discuss the challenges of implementing such schemes and future research directions therein

A Case Study of Edge Computing Implementations: Multi-access Edge Computing, Fog Computing and Cloudlet

With the explosive growth of intelligent and mobile devices, the current centralized cloud computing paradigm is encountering difficult challenges. Since the primary requirements have shifted towards implementing real-time response and supporting context awareness and mobility, there is an urgent need to bring resources and functions of centralized clouds to the edge of networks, which has led to the emergence of the edge computing paradigm. Edge computing increases the responsibilities of network edges by hosting computation and services, therefore enhancing performances and improving quality of experience (QoE). Fog computing, multi-access edge computing (MEC), and cloudlet are three typical and promising implementations of edge computing. Fog computing aims to build a system that enables cloud-to-thing service connectivity and works in concert with clouds, MEC is seen as a key technology of the fifth generation (5G) system, and Cloudlet is a micro-data center deployed in close proximity. In terms of deployment scenarios, Fog computing focuses on the Internet of Things (IoT), MEC mainly provides mobile RAN application solutions for 5G systems, and cloudlet offloads computing power at the network edge. In this paper, we present a comprehensive case study on these three edge computing implementations, including their architectures, differences, and their respective application scenario in IoT, 5G wireless systems, and smart edge. We discuss the requirements, benefits, and mechanisms of typical co-deployment cases for each paradigm and identify challenges and future directions in edge computing

Towards Mobile Edge Computing: Taxonomy, Challenges, Applications and Future Realms

The realm of cloud computing has revolutionized access to cloud resources and their utilization and applications over the Internet. However, deploying cloud computing for delay critical applications and reducing the delay in access to the resources are challenging. The Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) paradigm is one of the effective solutions, which brings the cloud computing services to the proximity of the edge network and leverages the available resources. This paper presents a survey of the latest and state-of-the-art algorithms, techniques, and concepts of MEC. The proposed work is unique in that the most novel algorithms are considered, which are not considered by the existing surveys. Moreover, the chosen novel literature of the existing researchers is classified in terms of performance metrics by describing the realms of promising performance and the regions where the margin of improvement exists for future investigation for the future researchers. This also eases the choice of a particular algorithm for a particular application. As compared to the existing surveys, the bibliometric overview is provided, which is further helpful for the researchers, engineers, and scientists for a thorough insight, application selection, and future consideration for improvement. In addition, applications related to the MEC platform are presented. Open research challenges, future directions, and lessons learned in area of the MEC are provided for further future investigation

Edge cloud architectures : a survey

Nowadays the number of connected devices is growing sharply. Mobile phones and other IoT devices are inherent parts of everyday life and used everywhere. The amount of data generated by IoT devices and mobile phones is enormous, which causes network congestions. In turn, the usage of centralized cloud architecture increases delay and cause jitter. To address those issues the research community discussed the new trend of decentralization – edge computing. There are different edge compute architectures suggested by various researchers. Some are more popular and supported by global companies. Most of those architectures have similarities. In this research, we reviewed seven edge compute architectures. This thesis is a comparative analysis carried out by using key attributes and presentation of the Venn diagram to select the right edge compute architecture

A survey on mobility-induced service migration in the fog, edge, and related computing paradigms

The final publication is available at ACM via http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3326540With the advent of fog and edge computing paradigms, computation capabilities have been moved toward the edge of the network to support the requirements of highly demanding services. To ensure that the quality of such services is still met in the event of users’ mobility, migrating services across different computing nodes becomes essential. Several studies have emerged recently to address service migration in different edge-centric research areas, including fog computing, multi-access edge computing (MEC), cloudlets, and vehicular clouds. Since existing surveys in this area focus on either VM migration in general or migration in a single research field (e.g., MEC), the objective of this survey is to bring together studies from different, yet related, edge-centric research fields while capturing the different facets they addressed. More specifically, we examine the diversity characterizing the landscape of migration scenarios at the edge, present an objective-driven taxonomy of the literature, and highlight contributions that rather focused on architectural design and implementation. Finally, we identify a list of gaps and research opportunities based on the observation of the current state of the literature. One such opportunity lies in joining efforts from both networking and computing research communities to facilitate future research in this area.Peer ReviewedPreprin