A Survey on Mobile Edge Networks: Convergence of Computing, Caching and Communications

As the explosive growth of smart devices and the advent of many new applications, traffic volume has been growing exponentially. The traditional centralized network architecture cannot accommodate such user demands due to heavy burden on the backhaul links and long latency. Therefore, new architectures which bring network functions and contents to the network edge are proposed, i.e., mobile edge computing and caching. Mobile edge networks provide cloud computing and caching capabilities at the edge of cellular networks. In this survey, we make an exhaustive review on the state-of-the-art research efforts on mobile edge networks. We first give an overview of mobile edge networks including definition, architecture and advantages. Next, a comprehensive survey of issues on computing, caching and communication techniques at the network edge is presented respectively. The applications and use cases of mobile edge networks are discussed. Subsequently, the key enablers of mobile edge networks such as cloud technology, SDN/NFV and smart devices are discussed. Finally, open research challenges and future directions are presented as well

Performance Analysis and Modeling of Video Transcoding Using Heterogeneous Cloud Services

High-quality video streaming, either in form of Video-On-Demand (VOD) or live streaming, usually requires converting (ie, transcoding) video streams to match the characteristics of viewers' devices (eg, in terms of spatial resolution or supported formats). Considering the computational cost of the transcoding operation and the surge in video streaming demands, Streaming Service Providers (SSPs) are becoming reliant on cloud services to guarantee Quality of Service (QoS) of streaming for their viewers. Cloud providers offer heterogeneous computational services in form of different types of Virtual Machines (VMs) with diverse prices. Effective utilization of cloud services for video transcoding requires detailed performance analysis of different video transcoding operations on the heterogeneous cloud VMs. In this research, for the first time, we provide a thorough analysis of the performance of the video stream transcoding on heterogeneous cloud VMs. Providing such analysis is crucial for efficient prediction of transcoding time on heterogeneous VMs and for the functionality of any scheduling methods tailored for video transcoding. Based upon the findings of this analysis and by considering the cost difference of heterogeneous cloud VMs, in this research, we also provide a model to quantify the degree of suitability of each cloud VM type for various transcoding tasks. The provided model can supply resource (VM) provisioning methods with accurate performance and cost trade-offs to efficiently utilize cloud services for video streaming.Comment: 15 page

A Survey on Low Latency Towards 5G: RAN, Core Network and Caching Solutions

The fifth generation (5G) wireless network technology is to be standardized by 2020, where main goals are to improve capacity, reliability, and energy efficiency, while reducing latency and massively increasing connection density. An integral part of 5G is the capability to transmit touch perception type real-time communication empowered by applicable robotics and haptics equipment at the network edge. In this regard, we need drastic changes in network architecture including core and radio access network (RAN) for achieving end-to-end latency on the order of 1 ms. In this paper, we present a detailed survey on the emerging technologies to achieve low latency communications considering three different solution domains: RAN, core network, and caching. We also present a general overview of 5G cellular networks composed of software defined network (SDN), network function virtualization (NFV), caching, and mobile edge computing (MEC) capable of meeting latency and other 5G requirements.Comment: Accepted in IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorial

Programming Cloud Resource Orchestration Framework: Operations and Research Challenges

The emergence of cloud computing over the past five years is potentially one of the breakthrough advances in the history of computing. It delivers hardware and software resources as virtualization-enabled services and in which administrators are free from the burden of worrying about the low level implementation or system administration details. Although cloud computing offers considerable opportunities for the users (e.g. application developers, governments, new startups, administrators, consultants, scientists, business analyst, etc.) such as no up-front investment, lowering operating cost, and infinite scalability, it has many unique research challenges that need to be carefully addressed in the future. In this paper, we present a survey on key cloud computing concepts, resource abstractions, and programming operations for orchestrating resources and associated research challenges, wherever applicable.Comment: 19 page

Base Station ON-OFF Switching in 5G Wireless Networks: Approaches and Challenges

To achieve the expected 1000x data rates under the exponential growth of traffic demand, a large number of base stations (BS) or access points (AP) will be deployed in the fifth generation (5G) wireless systems, to support high data rate services and to provide seamless coverage. Although such BSs are expected to be small-scale with lower power, the aggregated energy consumption of all BSs would be remarkable, resulting in increased environmental and economic concerns. In existing cellular networks, turning off the under-utilized BSs is an efficient approach to conserve energy while preserving the quality of service (QoS) of mobile users. However, in 5G systems with new physical layer techniques and the highly heterogeneous network architecture, new challenges arise in the design of BS ON-OFF switching strategies. In this article, we begin with a discussion on the inherent technical challenges of BS ON-OFF switching. We then provide a comprehensive review of recent advances on switching mechanisms in different application scenarios. Finally, we present open research problems and conclude the paper.Comment: Appear to IEEE Wireless Communications, 201

A Dynamic Service-Migration Mechanism in Edge Cognitive Computing

Driven by the vision of edge computing and the success of rich cognitive services based on artificial intelligence, a new computing paradigm, edge cognitive computing (ECC), is a promising approach that applies cognitive computing at the edge of the network. ECC has the potential to provide the cognition of users and network environmental information, and further to provide elastic cognitive computing services to achieve a higher energy efficiency and a higher Quality of Experience (QoE) compared to edge computing. This paper firstly introduces our architecture of the ECC and then describes its design issues in detail. Moreover, we propose an ECC-based dynamic service migration mechanism to provide an insight into how cognitive computing is combined with edge computing. In order to evaluate the proposed mechanism, a practical platform for dynamic service migration is built up, where the services are migrated based on the behavioral cognition of a mobile user. The experimental results show that the proposed ECC architecture has ultra-low latency and a high user experience, while providing better service to the user, saving computing resources, and achieving a high energy efficiency

All One Needs to Know about Fog Computing and Related Edge Computing Paradigms: A Complete Survey

With the Internet of Things (IoT) becoming part of our daily life and our environment, we expect rapid growth in the number of connected devices. IoT is expected to connect billions of devices and humans to bring promising advantages for us. With this growth, fog computing, along with its related edge computing paradigms, such as multi-access edge computing (MEC) and cloudlet, are seen as promising solutions for handling the large volume of security-critical and time-sensitive data that is being produced by the IoT. In this paper, we first provide a tutorial on fog computing and its related computing paradigms, including their similarities and differences. Next, we provide a taxonomy of research topics in fog computing, and through a comprehensive survey, we summarize and categorize the efforts on fog computing and its related computing paradigms. Finally, we provide challenges and future directions for research in fog computing.Comment: 48 pages, 7 tables, 11 figures, 450 references. The data (categories and features/objectives of the papers) of this survey are now available publicly. Accepted by Elsevier Journal of Systems Architectur

Risk-Aware Energy Scheduling for Edge Computing with Microgrid: A Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning Approach

In recent years, multi-access edge computing (MEC) is a key enabler for handling the massive expansion of Internet of Things (IoT) applications and services. However, energy consumption of a MEC network depends on volatile tasks that induces risk for energy demand estimations. As an energy supplier, a microgrid can facilitate seamless energy supply. However, the risk associated with energy supply is also increased due to unpredictable energy generation from renewable and non-renewable sources. Especially, the risk of energy shortfall is involved with uncertainties in both energy consumption and generation. In this paper, we study a risk-aware energy scheduling problem for a microgrid-powered MEC network. First, we formulate an optimization problem considering the conditional value-at-risk (CVaR) measurement for both energy consumption and generation, where the objective is to minimize the expected residual of scheduled energy for the MEC networks and we show this problem is an NP-hard problem. Second, we analyze our formulated problem using a multi-agent stochastic game that ensures the joint policy Nash equilibrium, and show the convergence of the proposed model. Third, we derive the solution by applying a multi-agent deep reinforcement learning (MADRL)-based asynchronous advantage actor-critic (A3C) algorithm with shared neural networks. This method mitigates the curse of dimensionality of the state space and chooses the best policy among the agents for the proposed problem. Finally, the experimental results establish a significant performance gain by considering CVaR for high accuracy energy scheduling of the proposed model than both the single and random agent models.Comment: Accepted Article BY IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management, DOI: 10.1109/TNSM.2021.304938

GPU PaaS Computation Model in Aneka Cloud Computing Environment

Due to the surge in the volume of data generated and rapid advancement in Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques like machine learning and deep learning, the existing traditional computing models have become inadequate to process an enormous volume of data and the complex application logic for extracting intrinsic information. Computing accelerators such as Graphics processing units (GPUs) have become de facto SIMD computing system for many big data and machine learning applications. On the other hand, the traditional computing model has gradually switched from conventional ownership-based computing to subscription-based cloud computing model. However, the lack of programming models and frameworks to develop cloud-native applications in a seamless manner to utilize both CPU and GPU resources in the cloud has become a bottleneck for rapid application development. To support this application demand for simultaneous heterogeneous resource usage, programming models and new frameworks are needed to manage the underlying resources effectively. Aneka is emerged as a popular PaaS computing model for the development of Cloud applications using multiple programming models like Thread, Task, and MapReduce in a single container .NET platform. Since, Aneka addresses MIMD application development that uses CPU based resources and GPU programming like CUDA is designed for SIMD application development, here, the chapter discusses GPU PaaS computing model for Aneka Clouds for rapid cloud application development for .NET platforms. The popular opensource GPU libraries are utilized and integrated it into the existing Aneka task programming model. The scheduling policies are extended that automatically identify GPU machines and schedule respective tasks accordingly. A case study on image processing is discussed to demonstrate the system, which has been built using PaaS Aneka SDKs and CUDA library.Comment: Submitted as book chapter, under processing, 32 page

iFogSim: A Toolkit for Modeling and Simulation of Resource Management Techniques in Internet of Things, Edge and Fog Computing Environments

Internet of Things (IoT) aims to bring every object (e.g. smart cameras, wearable, environmental sensors, home appliances, and vehicles) online, hence generating massive amounts of data that can overwhelm storage systems and data analytics applications. Cloud computing offers services at the infrastructure level that can scale to IoT storage and processing requirements. However, there are applications such as health monitoring and emergency response that require low latency, and delay caused by transferring data to the cloud and then back to the application can seriously impact their performances. To overcome this limitation, Fog computing paradigm has been proposed, where cloud services are extended to the edge of the network to decrease the latency and network congestion. To realize the full potential of Fog and IoT paradigms for real-time analytics, several challenges need to be addressed. The first and most critical problem is designing resource management techniques that determine which modules of analytics applications are pushed to each edge device to minimize the latency and maximize the throughput. To this end, we need a evaluation platform that enables the quantification of performance of resource management policies on an IoT or Fog computing infrastructure in a repeatable manner. In this paper we propose a simulator, called iFogSim, to model IoT and Fog environments and measure the impact of resource management techniques in terms of latency, network congestion, energy consumption, and cost. We describe two case studies to demonstrate modeling of an IoT environment and comparison of resource management policies. Moreover, scalability of the simulation toolkit in terms of RAM consumption and execution time is verified under different circumstances.Comment: Cloud Computing and Distributed Systems Laboratory, The University of Melbourne, June 6, 201