Carry-on State Service Handover between Edge Hosts for Latency Strict Applications in Mobile Networks

Edge computing brings computing and storage resources to the edge of the network, enabling cloud computing capabilities and an IT service environment with low latency communication. It is also expected to extend the capabilities of low-capability user equipment (UE) and also reduce power consumption on the UE by offloading computing tasks to an edge computing host server. This form of edge computing is called Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) and is considered as one of the key technologies for fifth generation mobile communication [1]. When applying MEC to a mobile communication network, the UE's mobility when providing a requested service from an appropriate MEC host (MEH) needs to be considered. There are several studies on service migration to a more appropriate MEH as the UE moves through the mobile network. However, it requires some time to migrate the service between two MEHs. And whether those ideas can be applied to applications with strict latency requirements has not been investigated. Therefore, this paper analyzes the characteristics of service migration and identifies the problems associated with it. Moreover, we propose a potentially alternative way to resume the ongoing service at a new appropriate MEH during UE movement by having the UE carry the service state, and present the advantages of this approach.