Collaborative Vehicular Edge Computing Networks: Architecture Design and Research Challenges

The emergence of augmented reality (AR), autonomous driving and other new applications have greatly enriched the functionality of the vehicular networks. However, these applications usually require complex calculations and large amounts of storage, which puts tremendous pressure on traditional vehicular networks. Mobile edge computing (MEC) is proposed as a prospective technique to extend computing and storage resources to the edge of the network. Combined with MEC, the computing and storage capabilities of the vehicular network can be further enhanced. Therefore, in this paper, we explore the novel collaborative vehicular edge computing network (CVECN) architecture. We first review the work related to MEC and vehicular networks. Then we discuss the design principles of CVECN. Based on the principles, we present the detailed CVECN architecture, and introduce the corresponding functional modules, communication process, as well as the installation and deployment ideas. Furthermore, the promising technical challenges, including collaborative coalition formation, collaborative task offloading and mobility management, are presented. And some potential research issues for future research are highlighted. Finally, simulation results are verified that the proposed CVECN can significantly improve network performance

A novel strategy for power sources management in connected plug-in hybrid electric vehicles based on mobile edge computation framework

This paper proposes a novel control framework and the corresponding strategy for power sources management in connected plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (cPHEVs). A mobile edge computation (MEC) based control framework is developed first, evolving the conventional on-board vehicle control unit (VCU) into the hierarchically asynchronous controller that is partly located in cloud. Elaborately contrastive analysis on the performance of processing capacity, communication frequency and communication delay manifests dramatic potential of the proposed framework in sustaining development of the cooperative control strategy for cPHEVs. On the basis of MEC based control framework, a specific cooperative strategy is constructed. The novel strategy accomplishes energy flow management between different power sources with incorporation of the active energy consumption plan and adaptive energy consumption management. The method to generate the reference battery state-of-charge (SOC) trajectories in energy consumption plan stage is emphatically investigated, fast outputting reference trajectories that are tightly close to results by global optimization methods. The estimation of distribution algorithm (EDA) is employed to output reference control policies under the specific terminal conditions assigned via the machine learning based method. Finally, simulation results highlight that the novel strategy attains superior performance in real-time application that is close to the offline global optimization solutions