NeiMEC: Automatically building neighbor relationship between mobile edge platforms in multi-access edge computing environment

Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) is a key technology towards achieving a 5G system. Via MEC technology, both the service latency and cost of the backhaul network can be decreased in 5G environments; however, the MEC servers work independently, without considering the status of other MEC servers, which may lead to some difficulties in meeting the 5G requirements defined by ITU-R. This paper proposes a novel architecture for multiple MEC servers, named NeiMEC, to define the neighbor relationship of multiple MEC servers. Via NeiMEC, the MEC servers can refer to the statistical information of neighbor MEC servers to apply an advanced content cache replacement policy when its content cache is full. The NeiMEC-based content cache replacement policy will improve the hit ratio of the contents (by up to 42%) above the hit ratio of systems that don't consider neighbor servers. Consequently, the latency of accessing service is improved.

I. Introduction

With the popularity of mobile devices and Internet services continuously, not only the throughput of mobile network keeps increasing, but also the latency for user experience is expected more and more strictly. For future 5G network, the properties of 5G performance requirements defined by International Telecommunication Union-Radio communication (ITU-R)[1] are low latency, high capacity, and more consistent experience for 5G service. For instance, the over-the-air latency is 1 ms, and area traffic capacity is 10 Tbps/km2. Moreover, the range of the end-to-end latency is 5–10 ms proposed by next generation mobile networks (NGMN) [2] and 5GPPP [3]. However, in current 4G network architecture, all packets should go through Evolved Packet Core network (EPC), it is obviously difficulty to meet the latency requirement for 5G services. Furthermore, the cost to establish high capacity for current Backhaul network is too expensive and inefficiency. Thus, Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) technology is considered as a cutting-edge technology towards 5G which is currently standardized in European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) Industry Specification Group (ISG).