The Internet of Things (IoT) now permeates our daily lives, providing important measurement and collection tools to inform our every decision. Millions of sensors and devices are continuously producing data and exchanging important messages via complex networks supporting machine-to-machine communications and monitoring and controlling critical smart-world infrastructures. As a strategy to mitigate the escalation in resource congestion, edge computing has emerged as a new paradigm to solve IoT and localized computing needs. Compared with the well-known cloud computing, edge computing will migrate data computation or storage to the network “edge,” near the end users. Thus, a number of computation nodes distributed across the network can offload the computational stress away from the centralized data center, and can significantly reduce the latency in message exchange. In addition, the distributed structure can balance network traffic and avoid the traffic peaks in IoT networks, reducing the transmission latency between edge/cloudlet servers and end users, as well as reducing response times for real-time IoT applications in comparison with traditional cloud services. Furthermore, by transferring computation and communication overhead from nodes with limited battery supply to nodes with significant power resources, the system can extend the lifetime of the individual nodes. In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive survey, analyzing how edge computing improves the performance of IoT networks. We categorize edge computing into different groups based on architecture, and study their performance by comparing network latency, bandwidth occupation, energy consumption, and overhead. In addition, we consider security issues in edge computing, evaluating the availability, integrity, and the confidentiality of security strategies of each group, and propose a framework for security evaluation of IoT networks with edge computing. Finally, we compare the performance of various IoT applications (smart city, smart grid, smart transportation, and so on) in edge computing and traditional cloud computing architectures.

A Survey on the Edge Computing for the Internet of Things

The fifth generation (5G) wireless communication networks are being deployed worldwide from 2020 and more capabilities are in the process of being standardized, such as mass connectivity, ultra-reliability, and guaranteed low latency. However, 5G will not meet all requirements of the future in 2030 and beyond, and sixth generation (6G) wireless communication networks are expected to provide global coverage, enhanced spectral/energy/cost efficiency, better intelligence level and security, etc. To meet these requirements, 6G networks will rely on new enabling technologies, i.e., air interface and transmission technologies and novel network architecture, such as waveform design, multiple access, channel coding schemes, multi-antenna technologies, network slicing, cell-free architecture, and cloud/fog/edge computing. Our vision on 6G is that it will have four new paradigm shifts. First, to satisfy the requirement of global coverage, 6G will not be limited to terrestrial communication networks, which will need to be complemented with non-terrestrial networks such as satellite and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communication networks, thus achieving a space-air-ground-sea integrated communication network. Second, all spectra will be fully explored to further increase data rates and connection density, including the sub-6 GHz, millimeter wave (mmWave), terahertz (THz), and optical frequency bands. Third, facing the big datasets generated by the use of extremely heterogeneous networks, diverse communication scenarios, large numbers of antennas, wide bandwidths, and new service requirements, 6G networks will enable a new range of smart applications with the aid of artificial intelligence (AI) and big data technologies. Fourth, network security will have to be strengthened when developing 6G networks. This article provides a comprehensive survey of recent advances and future trends in these four aspects. Clearly, 6G with additional technical requirements beyond those of 5G will enable faster and further communications to the extent that the boundary between physical and cyber worlds disappears.

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Towards 6G wireless communication networks: vision, enabling technologies, and new paradigm shifts

To satisfy the increasing demand of mobile data traffic and meet the stringent requirements of the emerging Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications such as smart city, healthcare, and augmented/virtual reality (AR/VR), the fifth-generation (5G) enabling technologies are proposed and utilized in networks As an emerging key technology of 5G and a key enabler of IoT, multiaccess edge computing (MEC), which integrates telecommunication and IT services, offers cloud computing capabilities at the edge of the radio access network (RAN) By providing computational and storage resources at the edge, MEC can reduce latency for end users Hence, this article investigates MEC for 5G and IoT comprehensively It analyzes the main features of MEC in the context of 5G and IoT and presents several fundamental key technologies which enable MEC to be applied in 5G and IoT, such as cloud computing, software-defined networking/network function virtualization, information-centric networks, virtual machine (VM) and containers, smart devices, network slicing, and computation offloading In addition, this article provides an overview of the role of MEC in 5G and IoT, bringing light into the different MEC-enabled 5G and IoT applications as well as the promising future directions of integrating MEC with 5G and IoT Moreover, this article further elaborates research challenges and open issues of MEC for 5G and IoT Last but not least, we propose a use case that utilizes MEC to achieve edge intelligence in IoT scenarios

Toward Edge Intelligence: Multiaccess Edge Computing for 5G and Internet of Things

The Internet of Vehicles (IoV) is an emerging paradigm that is driven by recent advancements in vehicular communications and networking. Meanwhile, the capability and intelligence of vehicles are being rapidly enhanced, and this will have the potential of supporting a plethora of new exciting applications that will integrate fully autonomous vehicles, the Internet of Things (IoT), and the environment. These trends will bring about an era of intelligent IoV, which will heavily depend on communications, computing, and data analytics technologies. To store and process the massive amount of data generated by intelligent IoV, onboard processing and cloud computing will not be sufficient due to resource/power constraints and communication overhead/latency, respectively. By deploying storage and computing resources at the wireless network edge, e.g., radio access points, the edge information system (EIS), including edge caching, edge computing, and edge AI, will play a key role in the future intelligent IoV. EIS will provide not only low-latency content delivery and computation services but also localized data acquisition, aggregation, and processing. This article surveys the latest development in EIS for intelligent IoV. Key design issues, methodologies, and hardware platforms are introduced. In particular, typical use cases for intelligent vehicles are illustrated, including edge-assisted perception, mapping, and localization. In addition, various open-research problems are identified.

Mobile Edge Intelligence and Computing for the Internet of Vehicles

Driven by the emergence of new compute-intensive applications and the vision of the Internet of Things (IoT), it is foreseen that the emerging 5G network will face an unprecedented increase in traffic volume and computation demands. However, end users mostly have limited storage capacities and finite processing capabilities, thus how to run compute-intensive applications on resource-constrained users has recently become a natural concern. Mobile edge computing (MEC), a key technology in the emerging fifth generation (5G) network, can optimize mobile resources by hosting compute-intensive applications, process large data before sending to the cloud, provide the cloud computing capabilities within the radio access network (RAN) in close proximity to mobile users, and offer context-aware services with the help of RAN information. Therefore, MEC enables a wide variety of applications, where the real-time response is strictly required, e.g., driverless vehicles, augmented reality, robotics, and immerse media. Indeed, the paradigm shift from 4G to 5G could become a reality with the advent of new technological concepts. The successful realization of MEC in the 5G network is still in its infancy and demands for constant efforts from both academic and industry communities. In this survey, we first provide a holistic overview of MEC technology and its potential use cases and applications. Then, we outline up-to-date researches on the integration of MEC with the new technologies that will be deployed in 5G and beyond. We also summarize testbeds and experimental evaluations, and open source activities, for edge computing. We further summarize lessons learned from state-of-the-art research works as well as discuss challenges and potential future directions for MEC research.

A Survey of Multi-Access Edge Computing in 5G and Beyond: Fundamentals, Technology Integration, and State-of-the-Art

Mobile edge computing (MEC) provides a promising approach to significantly reduce network operational cost and improve quality of service (QoS) of mobile users by pushing computation resources to the network edges, and enables a scalable Internet of Things (IoT) architecture for time-sensitive applications (e-healthcare, real-time monitoring, and so on.). However, the mobility of mobile users and the limited coverage of edge servers can result in significant network performance degradation, dramatic drop in QoS, and even interruption of ongoing edge services; therefore, it is difficult to ensure service continuity. Service migration has great potential to address the issues, which decides when or where these services are migrated following user mobility and the changes of demand. In this paper, two conceptions similar to service migration, i.e., live migration for data centers and handover in cellular networks, are first discussed. Next, the cutting-edge research efforts on service migration in MEC are reviewed, and a devisal of taxonomy based on various research directions for efficient service migration is presented. Subsequently, a summary of three technologies for hosting services on edge servers, i.e., virtual machine, container, and agent, is provided. At last, open research challenges in service migration are identified and discussed.

A Survey on Service Migration in Mobile Edge Computing

Vehicular edge computing (VEC) offers a new paradigm to improve vehicular services and augment the capabilities of vehicles. In this article, we study the problem of task scheduling in VEC, where multiple computation-intensive vehicular applications can be offloaded to roadside units (RSUs) and each application can be further divided into multiple tasks with task dependency. The tasks can be scheduled to different mobile-edge computing servers on RSUs for execution to minimize the average completion time of multiple applications. Considering the completion time constraint of each application and the processing dependency of multiple tasks belonging to the same application, we formulate the multiple tasks scheduling problem as an optimization problem that is NP-hard. To solve the optimization problem, we develop an efficient task scheduling algorithm. The basic idea is to prioritize multiple applications and prioritize multiple tasks so as to guarantee the completion time constraints of applications and the processing dependency requirements of tasks. The numerical results demonstrate that our proposed algorithm can significantly reduce the average completion time of multiple applications compared with benchmark algorithms.

Dependency-Aware Task Scheduling in Vehicular Edge Computing

Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) offers a new paradigm to improve vehicular services and augment the capabilities of vehicles. In this paper, to reduce the latency of the computation offloading of vehicles, we study multiple vehicles computation offloading problem in vehicular edge networks. We formulate the problem as a multi-user computation offloading game problem, prove the existence of Nash equilibrium (NE) of the game and propose a distributed computation offloading algorithm to compute the equilibrium. We analyze the price of anarchy of the game algorithm and evaluate the performance of the game algorithm using extensive simulations. Numerical results show that the proposed algorithm can greatly reduce the computation overhead of vehicles.

A Computation Offloading Algorithm Based on Game Theory for Vehicular Edge Networks

Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) offers a new paradigm to relieve the pressure of soaring data demands and augment the capabilities of resource-poor mobile devices. In this paper, we study the multi-user computation offloading problem in MCC to reduce the total cost including energy consumption, time consumption and monetary cost on mobile devices. We formulate the computation offloading decision making problem among multiple mobile device users as a multi-user computation offloading game problem. We present a distributed computation offloading algorithm and show the existence of Nash equilibrium of the game. We show that the proposed algorithm can achieve efficient computation offloading performance.

Poster Abstract: A Multi-user Computation Offloading Algorithm Based on Game Theory in Mobile Cloud Computing

This paper presents a systematical approach to develop a novel reduced complexity quadruped (RCQ) robot designed for serpentine robotic tail research purposes. The critical design requirements are determined based on careful dynamic analysis and synthesis results. Guided by formulated design requirements and principles, a robot prototype was designed and built. The robot has an overall weight of 5 Kg and the body size of a domestic cat. The existing electronic system allows a control frequency of up to 1 kHz and accepts both torque and position commands. These features guarantee that the platform could be used to explore the dynamic usages of robotic tails on legged locomotion. The preliminary tests show that the hardware can lift itself off the ground up to 112 mm (46.7% of its body height) and stay in the air for at least 0.3 seconds.

Yujiong Liu

Papers

A Survey on Service Migration in Mobile Edge Computing

Dependency-Aware Task Scheduling in Vehicular Edge Computing

A Computation Offloading Algorithm Based on Game Theory for Vehicular Edge Networks

Poster Abstract: A Multi-user Computation Offloading Algorithm Based on Game Theory in Mobile Cloud Computing

Systematic Development of a Novel, Dynamic, Reduced Complexity Quadruped Robot Platform for Robotic Tail Research