No Arabic abstract
Recently, Mobile-Edge Computing (MEC) has arisen as an emerging paradigm that extends cloud-computing capabilities to the edge of the Radio Access Network (RAN) by deploying MEC servers right at the Base Stations (BSs). In this paper, we envision a collaborative joint caching and processing strategy for on-demand video streaming in MEC networks. Our design aims at enhancing the widely used Adaptive BitRate (ABR) streaming technology, where multiple bitra
Due to explosive growth of online video content in mobile wireless networks, in-network caching is becoming increasingly important to improve the end-user experience and reduce the Internet access cost for mobile network operators. However, caching is a difficult problem due to the very large number of online videos and video requests,limited capacity of caching nodes, and limited bandwidth of in-network links. Existing solutions that rely on static configurations and average request arrival rates are insufficient to handle dynamic request patterns effectively. In this paper, we propose a dynamic collaborative video caching framework to be deployed in mobile networks. We decompose the caching problem into a content placement subproblem and a source-selection subproblem. We then develop SRS (System capacity Reservation Strategy) to solve the content placement subproblem, and LinkShare, an adaptive traffic-aware algorithm to solve the source selection subproblem. Our framework supports congestion avoidance and allows merging multiple requests for the same video into one request. We carry extensive simulations to validate the proposed schemes. Simulation results show that our SRS algorithm achieves performance within 1-3% of the optimal values and LinkShare significantly outperforms existing solutions.
Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) is an emerging paradigm that provides computing, storage, and networking resources within the edge of the mobile Radio Access Network (RAN). MEC servers are deployed on generic computing platform within the RAN and allow for delay-sensitive and context-aware applications to be executed in close proximity to the end users. This approach alleviates the backhaul and core network and is crucial for enabling low-latency, high-bandwidth, and agile mobile services. This article envisages a real-time, context-aware collaboration framework that lies at the edge of the RAN, constituted of MEC servers and mobile devices, and that amalgamates the heterogeneous resources at the edge. Specifically, we introduce and study three strong use cases ranging from mobile-edge orchestration, collaborative caching and processing and multi-layer interference cancellation. We demonstrate the promising benefits of these approaches in facilitating the evolution to 5G networks. Finally, we discuss the key technical challenges and open-research issues that need to be addressed in order to make an efficient integration of MEC into 5G ecosystem.
Recently, along with the rapid development of mobile communication technology, edge computing theory and techniques have been attracting more and more attentions from global researchers and engineers, which can significantly bridge the capacity of cloud and requirement of devices by the network edges, and thus can accelerate the content deliveries and improve the quality of mobile services. In order to bring more intelligence to the edge systems, compared to traditional optimization methodology, and driven by the current deep learning techniques, we propose to integrate the Deep Reinforcement Learning techniques and Federated Learning framework with the mobile edge systems, for optimizing the mobile edge computing, caching and communication. And thus, we design the In-Edge AI framework in order to intelligently utilize the collaboration among devices and edge nodes to exchange the learning parameters for a better training and inference of the models, and thus to carry out dynamic system-level optimization and application-level enhancement while reducing the unnecessary system communication load. In-Edge AI is evaluated and proved to have near-optimal performance but relatively low overhead of learning, while the system is cognitive and adaptive to the mobile communication systems. Finally, we discuss several related challenges and opportunities for unveiling a promising upcoming future of In-Edge AI.
Provided with mobile edge computing (MEC) services, wireless devices (WDs) no longer have to experience long latency in running their desired programs locally, but can pay to offload computation tasks to the edge server. Given its limited storage space, it is important for the edge server at the base station (BS) to determine which service programs to cache by meeting and guiding WDs offloading decisions. In this paper, we propose an MEC service pricing scheme to coordinate with the service caching decisions and control WDs task offloading behavior. We propose a two-stage dynamic game of incomplete information to model and analyze the two-stage interaction between the BS and multiple associated WDs. Specifically, in Stage I, the BS determines the MEC service caching and announces the service program prices to the WDs, with the objective to maximize its expected profit under both storage and computation resource constraints. In Stage II, given the prices of different service programs, each WD selfishly decides its offloading decision to minimize individual service delay and cost, without knowing the other WDs desired program types or local execution delays. Despite the lack of WDs information and the coupling of all the WDs offloading decisions, we derive the optimal threshold-based offloading policy that can be easily adopted by the WDs in Stage II at the Bayesian equilibrium. Then, by predicting the WDs offloading equilibrium, we jointly optimize the BS pricing and service caching in Stage I via a low-complexity algorithm. In particular, we study both the uniform and differentiated pricing schemes. For differentiated pricing, we prove that the same price should be charged to the cached programs of the same workload.
This paper studies edge caching in fog computing networks, where a capacity-aware edge caching framework is proposed by considering both the limited fog cache capacity and the connectivity capacity of base stations (BSs). By allowing cooperation between fog nodes and cloud data center, the average-download-time (ADT) minimization problem is formulated as a multi-class processor queuing process. We prove the convexity of the formulated problem and propose an Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM)-based algorithm that can achieve the minimum ADT and converge much faster than existing algorithms. Simulation results demonstrate that the allocation of fog cache capacity and connectivity capacity of BSs needs to be balanced according to the network status. While the maximization of the edge-cache-hit-ratio (ECHR) by utilizing all available fog cache capacity is helpful when the BS connectivity capacity is sufficient, it is preferable to keep a lower ECHR and allocate more traffic to the cloud when the BS connectivity capacity is deficient.