Microservices in Edge and Cloud Computing for Safety in Intelligent Transportation Systems

In the last years there has been a strong effort in the development of Intelligent Transportation System (ITS)-based solutions, leading to an important change in the way that drivers and other road users become aware of the surroundings. The development of Cooperative-ITS, which utilises direct wireless short-range connections, is integrating cellular networks as well (4G and 5G), allowing the growing use of the road users smartphones to provide real-time information about Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs), like pedestrians and cyclists. Such increase is becoming a serious concern, since every VRU is likely to have one smartphone, which may lead to scalability and latency issues. This work presents an approach for a microservices-based application, targeting the always critical VRU safety use-case, in a multi-site scenario, using real road infrastructure Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) and mobile network provider cloud computing. The main novelty of this work is the multiple approaches on the deployment of the required microservices, and several scenarios that have been tested, and the investigation of the best approach to minimize the service-level latency of the safety application. The results show the potential of microservices distribution through the edge and cloud, with a strong impact on improving the efficiency of ITS. Depending on the services’ location, the latency of the VRU and vehicle’s notification is deeply affected, but using a federated scenario we are able to keep the VRU’s notification delay around the 200 ms, with better results being achieved if a closer mobile network provider cloud platform is used. The results present a noticeable advancement in the development of more scalable and operational solutions that work on improving ITS, with a focus on microservices and edge computing to minimize the delay of critical applications.