Actions at the Edge: Jointly Optimizing the Resources in Multi-Access Edge Computing

Multi-access edge computing (MEC) is an emerging paradigm that pushes resources for sensing, communications, computing, storage, and intelligence to the premises closer to the end users (i.e., the edge) so that they can leverage the nearby rich resources to improve their quality of experience. Due to the growing emerging applications targeted at intelligentizing life-sustaining cyber-physical systems, this paradigm has become a hot research topic, particularly when MEC is utilized to provide edge intelligence and real-time processing and control. This article elaborates the research issues along this line, including basic concepts and performance metrics, killer applications, architectural design, modeling approaches and solutions, and future research directions. It is hoped that this article provides a quick introduction to this fruitful research area, particularly for beginning researchers.