CNS Core: Small: Towards Seamless Mobility in Mobile Edge Computing Networks

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Mobile edge computing (MEC) has emerged as a promising technology to overcome the challenges of executing latency-sensitive and computation-intensive applications at resource-limited mobile devices, by pushing mobile computing, network control, and storage resources to the edge of mobile wireless networks. The mobility support issue is considered as a critical component to ensure the success of MEC. Although the mobility support issue has been extensively investigated in conventional wireless networks, mobility management schemes proposed in these networks consider the communication-only scenario, while MEC networks tie communications together with computing activities. Therefore, many issues related to mobility support in MEC networks remain unexplored. Existing communication-oriented mobility solutions will have serious performance degradation due to the neglect of computation related metrics in mobility solutions. In addition, new uplink and downlink traffic distribution in MEC creates unique challenges for seamless mobility support. This research will help generate innovative mobility support techniques for numerous applications, e.g., autonomous driving, cognitive assistance, mobile health, and Internet of Everything. It will also have significant impacts on research in emerging technologies with high mobility scenarios, such as connected vehicles and unmanned aerial systems.The research objective of this project is to design, analyze, and evaluate new algorithms for providing seamless mobility support in mobile edge computing (MEC) networks with integrated computing and communication activities. The proposed design is aimed at minimizing service disruptions and performance degradation caused by user mobility in MEC. This research is the first that systematically addresses the unique challenges encountered during the course of seamless mobility support in MEC networks. This project includes three research tasks to achieve the seamless mobility goal: (1) design a smart handoff triggering scheme to achieve a fast and accurate trigger for seamless mobility support; (2) design a service rebuilding process for seamlessly restoring offloaded services on the new MEC server after a handoff is triggered; and (3) design a service allocation scheme to minimize performance degradation during mobility caused by radio resource allocation unfairness. This research offers fundamental building blocks and provides invaluable insights towards seamless mobility in MEC networks. This project also integrates research findings into related graduate courses and diversity support.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.