Enabling Low Latency Services on LTE Networks

The upcoming 5G technologies promise to enable ultra low latency services such as remote robotics, augmented reality or vehicle to vehicle communications. Fog and MEC computing can enable low latency services for many different scenarios by moving the cloud and some network functions closer to the user. In the case of mobile networks this improvement is traditionally introduced in the reference point that defines the limit of the operator domain. In this paper we explore the introduction of an intermediate component in the LTE standard architecture, describing its functionality and providing experimental results on its use. This component, called Fog Gateway, can process the data plane for specific services to prevent all the traffic reaching the core network. The gateway analyzes the GTP traffic inner destination IP in order to determine whether to route the packet to the fog network or forward it to the destination SGW. The solution is compliant with standard LTE equipment all along the path (UE, eNodeB, EPC), so it can be implemented in current networks, and the preliminary figures, obtained combining emulated and COTS equipment, show an improvement of up to the 78% in terms of latency reduction.