Mobile Edge Computing: A Survey on Architecture and Computation Offloading

Abstract

Technological evolution of mobile user equipments (UEs), such as smartphones, laptops, etc., goes hand-in-hand with evolution of new mobile applications. However, running computationally demanding applications at the UEs is constrained by limited battery capacity and quite significant energy consumption of the UEs. Suitable solution extending the battery life-time of the UEs is to offload applications demanding huge processing to a conventional centralized cloud (CC). Nevertheless, this option introduces significant execution delay consisting in delivery of the offloaded applications to the cloud and back plus time of the computation at the cloud. Such delays are inconvenient and make the offloading unsuitable for real-time applications. To cope with the delay problem, a new emerging concept, known as mobile edge computing (MEC), has been introduced. The MEC brings computation and storage resources to the edge of mobile networks enabling to run highly demanding applications at the UE while meeting strict delay requirements. The MEC computing resources can be exploited also by operators and third parties for specific purposes. In this paper, we first describe major use cases and reference scenarios where the MEC is applicable. After that we survey existing concepts integrating MEC functionalities to the mobile networks and discuss current advancement in standardization of the MEC. The core of this survey is, then, focused on user-related research in the MEC, i.e., computation offloading. In this regard, we divide the research on computation offloading to three key areas: i) decision on computation offloading, ii) allocation of computing resource within the MEC, and iii) mobility management. Finally, we highlight lessons learned in area of the computation offloading and we discuss several open research challenges yet to be addressed in order to fully enjoy potentials offered by the MEC.