Collaborative Research: SAI-P: Public Multi-Access Edge Cloud (pMEC) as a Community-Based Distributed Computing Infrastructure for Emerging Real-Time Applications

加强美国基础设施(SAI)是一项NSF计划，旨在刺激以人类为中心的基础性研究和潜在的变革性研究，以加强美国的基础设施。有效的基础设施为社会经济活力和广泛的生活质量改善提供了坚实的基础。强大、可靠和有效的基础设施刺激私营部门创新，增长经济，创造就业机会，提高公共部门服务提供效率，加强社区力量，促进机会均等，保护自然环境，增强国家安全，推动美国的领导地位。要实现这些目标，需要来自科学和工程学科的专业知识。SAI专注于人类推理和决策、治理以及社会和文化过程的知识如何能够建立和维护有效的基础设施，以改善生活和社会，并建立在技术和工程进步的基础上。信息技术基础设施使各种应用程序几乎服务于当代生活的方方面面。随着网络变得更快、更广泛，云服务(海量存储和高端计算能力)现在得到了普遍使用。更高速的有线和无线(5G)接入的引入正在将云计算的边界推向更远。商业移动网络运营商现在正在投资多路访问边缘云(MEC)技术，在该技术中，个人和小企业支持共享计算资源的自组织网络，其方式克服了长距离光纤的一些限制。如果MEC平台的部署完全由大型服务提供商进行私人投资，很可能许多人将无法获得或仅由一家提供商提供服务，导致许多最终用户和社区无法获得或无法获得过于昂贵或无法满足其服务质量需求的服务。该SAI规划项目提出了开放协作的公共多路访问边缘云(PMEC)的概念。公共边缘云旨在通过自愿贡献社区内未得到充分利用的计算能力来进行自我组织。公共边缘云基础设施使服务不足社区的用户能够访问巨大的近距离计算能力，而无需依赖大型网络运营商的昂贵服务。通过扩大对互联网和美国计算基础设施的访问，公共边缘云能力促进和维持国家在全球经济中的竞争优势。公共边缘云基础设施的设计需要多学科的努力，其中技术开发受商业模式以及促进最终用户采用的成本和性能特性的影响。此SAI规划项目侧重于pMEC的技术考虑，以及可行的经济和商业模式，以及支持和维持广泛部署所必需的最终用户采用特性。该项目为分布式公共边缘云部署开发初步的架构级别设计，确定对5G和云的新兴技术标准进行必要的增强。它还为拟议的社区边缘云制定了激励兼容业务和合作治理模式的计划，以促进初始部署和可持续运营。一个小型概念验证原型演示了pMEC的基本概念。开发协作是为了评估利益相关者对采用和参与建议的pMEC部署的意愿的行为反应。实现公共边缘云基础设施的承诺依赖于与计算机科学和工程合作，利用社会、行为和经济科学不断增长的多学科协作研究。该奖项由社会、行为和经济理事会(SBE)和计算机和信息科学与工程理事会(CEISE)支持。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Strengthening American Infrastructure (SAI) is an NSF Program seeking to stimulate human-centered fundamental and potentially transformative research that strengthens America’s infrastructure. Effective infrastructure provides a strong foundation for socioeconomic vitality and broad quality of life improvement. Strong, reliable, and effective infrastructure spurs private-sector innovation, grows the economy, creates jobs, makes public-sector service provision more efficient, strengthens communities, promotes equal opportunity, protects the natural environment, enhances national security, and fuels American leadership. To achieve these goals requires expertise from across the science and engineering disciplines. SAI focuses on how knowledge of human reasoning and decision-making, governance, and social and cultural processes enables the building and maintenance of effective infrastructure that improves lives and society and builds on advances in technology and engineering.Information technology infrastructure enables a wide variety of applications that serve almost every facet of contemporary life. Cloud services (mass storage and high-end computing power) are now commonly used as networks have become faster and more widespread. The introduction of even higher-speed wired and wireless (5G) access is pushing the boundary of cloud computing even farther. Commercial mobile network operators are now investing in multi-access edge cloud (MEC) technology, in which individuals and small enterprises support a self-organizing nexus of shared computing resources in a way that overcomes some of the limitations of long distance fiber. If the deployment of MEC platforms is left entirely to private investment by large service providers, it is likely that many people will not be served or served only by a single provider, leaving many end-users and communities without access or with access to services that are too expensive or otherwise fail to meet their quality-of-service needs. This SAI planning project develops the concept of an open collaborative public multi-access edge cloud (pMEC). The public edge cloud is designed to self-organize through voluntary contributions of under-utilized computing power within the community. A public edge cloud infrastructure makes it possible for users in under-served communities to access massive, close-in computing power without depending on the expensive services of large network operators. By broadening access to the internet and computing infrastructure of the United States, a public edge cloud capability promotes and sustains the nation’s competitive advantages in the global economy.Design of the public edge cloud infrastructure requires a multi-disciplinary effort in which technology development is informed by business models and by cost and performance properties that promote end-user adoption. This SAI planning project focuses on technology considerations for the pMEC along with viable economic and business models with end-user adoption properties necessary to enable and sustain widespread deployment. The project develops preliminary architectural level designs for distributed public edge cloud deployments, identifying necessary enhancements to the emerging technical standards for 5G and cloud. It also develops plans for incentive-compatible business and cooperative governance models for the proposed community edge cloud to motivate initial deployment and sustainable operations. A small proof-of-concept prototype demonstrates the basic pMEC concept. Collaborations are developed to evaluate stakeholder behavioral responses regarding willingness to adopt and participate in proposed pMEC deployments. Delivering on the promise of public edge cloud infrastructure depends on growing multi-disciplinary collaborative research drawing on social, behavioral, and economic sciences in partnership with computer science and engineering.This award is supported by the Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic (SBE) Sciences and the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE).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.