MEC Architectures in 4G and 5G Mobile Networks

Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) can provide the intelligent platform or environment for services with the requirements of lower latency, higher bandwidth, and higher computation complexity, thereby attracting more attention in the future network. Intuitively, MEC can be applied to 4G and 5G mobile networks respectively, however the corresponding MEC architectures will be entirely different because of the difference between 4G and 5G network architectures. Therefore, this paper firstly presents the 4G MEC architecture and deeply discusses the existing problems in field trials and future deployment, e.g. charging, lawful interception, etc. Considering the above problems, the 5G MEC integrated architecture is proposed in this paper, which takes the network and service functions into account simultaneously. Meanwhile, the network function, especially for the traffic offloading mechanism, is emphatically analyzed and discussed. In addition, some suggestions are also presented for promotion of 5G MEC.