MEC Research Agenda - work in progress

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Motivation

Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) is placing of applications at the edge of the mobile network to gain benefits of proximity, low latency and computing close to the end user.

The goal of ETSI MEC ISG (and specifically of IEG working group) is to promote the adoption of MEC technology and increase the awareness on that topic.

Thus, the group recently decided to open the present MEC wiki to contributions coming from the research world. The following page, called “MEC research agenda”, collect material coming from selected researchers experts in the field, and its publication serves on one hand as a potential help for the reader to gather relevant information on Mobile Edge Computing, and on the other hand gives to researchers the opportunity to show their ongoing projects and achievements in the field of Edge Computing/MEC (conference papers, journal papers, talks, events, but also experimental works and other initiatives in the area).

Finally, we think it is an opportunity for joint visibility for your projects and for us to expand our visibility in order to promote the adoption of MEC/Edge application technologies and increase the awareness of the topics, from the research world.

For this purpose, any further input is welcome (for any wiki related request, please contact ETSI CTI).

Enjoy the reading!

First activities and publications around MEC

Research activities around Mobile Edge Computing started even before the creation of the ISG. Apart from the ETSI official white paper (link below), that is describing the technology and ETSI MEC group activity, we can mention some research institutions that are quite active in the field:

Relevant publications and useful links

Also some EU funded projects (especially belonging to 5G PPP) are working on topics related to Mobile Edge Computing. Among the others, the following projects can be mentioned:

  • 5GEx: “5G Exchange”. This project is working on the federation of computing environments spread across the networks involving multiple administrative domains (i.e., application providers + network providers). Link: http://www.5gex.eu/.
  • Flex5Gware: “Flexible and efficient hardware/software platforms for 5G network elements and devices”. The overall objective of Flex5Gware is to deliver highly reconfigurable HW platforms together with HW-agnostic SW platforms targeting both network elements and devices taking into account increased capacity, reduced energy footprint, as well as scalability and modularity. Link: http://www.flex5gware.eu
  • 5GNORMA: “5G Novel Radio Multiservice adaptive network Architecture”. The 5GNORMA project focuses on a technology to allow for flexible allocation of network functions depending on the services’ requirements. This includes the placement of functions in the so-called edge cloud, which is one of the key use cases addressed by 5GNORMA. Link: https://5gnorma.5g-ppp.eu/
  • 5G-Crosshaul: “the 5G integrated fronthaul/backhaul”. The 5G-Crosshaul project aims at developing a 5G integrated backhaul and fronthaul transport network enabling a flexible and software-defined reconfiguration of all networking elements in a multi-tenant and service-oriented unified management environment. Link: http://5g-crosshaul.eu

Technical aspects of interest from MEC perspective

Some activities not directly related to ME Platform can be of interest because of their impact on Mobile Edge Computing adoption acceleration. Among the others, we can mention the research around virtual RAN (V-RAN), device-to-device (D2D) communication, etc...


• V-RAN: prototyping solutions and algorithms

Research on 4G/5G cellular networks is progressively shifting to paradigms that involve virtualization and cloud computing. In particular, the future implementation of virtual RAN can be a valuable catalyst to accelerate the adoption of MEC systems, thanks to the presence of a more open environment where radio network information can be retrieved from the eNB.

Within this context, prototyping assumes a growing importance as a performance evaluation method, besides large-scale simulations, as it allows one to evaluate the computational requirements of the system. The EU project Flex5GWare H2020 is currently realizing a V-RAN prototype using OpenAirInterface (OAI) and commodity hardware.

Relevant publications and useful links

  1. N. Iardella, G. Stea, A. Virdis, D. Sabella, A. Frangioni, "Statistically sound experiments with OpenAirInterface Cloud-RAN prototypes", CLEEN 2016, Grenoble, FR, May 2016.
  2. N. Iardella, G. Nardini, G. Stea, A. Virdis, F. Mauro, D. Sabella, M. Caretti, G.M. Dell’Aera, “Coordinated scheduling in a Virtual-RAN prototype with OpenAirInterface”, EUCNC 2016, Athens, 27-30 June 2016
  3. OpenAirInterface initiative, http://www.openairinterface.org


• D2D: devising solutions for LTE-empowered fog computing

The LTE-Advanced technology and its evolutions will play a major role as a communication infrastructure that guarantees low deployment costs, plug-and-play seamless configuration and embedded security, and as such can support future M2M Fog computing platforms. In particular, a network deployment that exploits Device-to-Device (D2D) communications can be employed to support efficient communication between Fog nodes and smart objects, enabling low-latency interactions and locality-preserving multicast transmissions.

Relevant publications

  1. C. Vallati, A. Virdis, E. Mingozzi, G. Stea, "Exploiting LTE D2D Communications in M2M Fog Platforms: Deployment and Practical Issues”, proc. of IEEE 2nd World Forum on Internet of Things (WF-IoT), Milan, Italy, 14-16 Dec. 2015, pp. 585-590, DOI: 10.1109/WF-IoT.2015.7389119

Conferences and MEC-related events

Present and past conferences, call for papers are here listed, not with the intention to be exhaustive, but the aim to provide an overview of research initiatives around Mobile Edge Computing technologies.

  • 2016 IEEE Conference on Standards for Communications and Networking (IEEE CSCN’16), (http://cscn2016.ieee-cscn.org/) held in Berlin, Germany, 31st Oct – 2nd Nov 2016, in conjunction with the IEEE 5G summit.
  • Fourth International Workshop on Cloud Technologies and Energy Efficiency in Mobile Communication Networks (CLEEN 2016), in conjunction with CrownCom 2016, 30 May – 1 June 2016, Grenoble, France

Other publications relevant to Mobile Edge Computing

• Cerrato, A. Palesandro; F. Risso, M. Suñé, V. Vercellone, H. Woesner, Hagen. “Toward dynamic virtualized network services in telecom operator networks”. In: Elsevier Computer Networks, vol. 92 n. 2, pp. 380-395, 2015.

• A. Aissioui, A. Ksentini, A. Gueroui, and T. Taleb, “Elastic and Distributed SDN Controllers for Follow-Me Cloud” in IEEE Access Magazine, DOI 10.1109/ACCESS.2015.2489930, Vol. 3, Nov. 2015.

• A. Ksentini, T. Taleb, and F. Messaoudi, “A LISP-based Implementation of Follow Me Cloud”, in IEEE Access Magazine, Vol 2, Oct. 2014. pp. 1340-1347

• T. Taleb and A. Ksentini, “Follow Me Cloud: Interworking Federated Clouds & Distributed Mobile Networks”, in IEEE Network Magazine, Vol. 27, No. 5, Sep./Oct. 2013. pp. 12 – 19

• P. Frangoudis, L. Yala, A. Ksentini, and T. Taleb, “An architecture for on-demand service deployment over a telco CDN”, in IEEE ICC’16, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, May 2016.

• A. Ksentini, M. Bagaa, T. Taleb, and I. Balasingham, “On using bargaining game for Optimal Placement of SDN controllers”, in IEEE ICC’16, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, May 2016.

• A. Ksentini, T. Taleb, and M. Chen, “A Markov Decision Process-based Service Migration Procedure for Follow Me Cloud”, in Proc. IEEE ICC 2014, Sydney, Australia, Jun. 2014.

• J Oueis, EC Strinati, S Sardellitti, S Barbarossa, “Small Cell Clustering for Efficient Distributed Fog Computing: A Multi-User Case”, Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC Fall), 2015 IEEE 82nd, 1-5, 2015

• J Oueis, EC Strinati, S Barbarossa, “The Fog Balancing: Load Distribution for Small Cell Cloud Computing”, 2015 IEEE 81st Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC Spring), 1-6, 2015

• Schneider Electric: ‘The Drivers and Benefits of Edge Computing’, 2016; Link: http://www.apcmedia.com/salestools/VAVR-A4M867/VAVR-A4M867_R0_EN.pdf?sdirect=true

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