Integrated Networking, Caching, and Computing for Future Wireless Networks

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Recent advances in information and communications technology (ICT) have fueled a plethora of innovations in various areas, including networking, caching, and computing, all of which have profound impacts on the development of future generation wireless networks. In the area of networking, software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) have attracted tremendous interests in both academia and industry. In-network caching is another promising technology that can efficiently reduce access delays, traffic loads, and network costs. Moreover, recent advances in computing (e.g., cloud/fog/edge computing) will also have significant impacts on future wireless networks. Particularly, mobile edge computing has been proposed to deploy computing resources closer to mobile devices, which can efficiently improve the performance for applications requiring resource-intensive computations and low latency. While some work have been done on networking, caching and computing for future wireless networks, these three important enabling technologies have traditionally been studied separately in the existing works. However, an integrated framework for networking, caching and computing has the potential to significantly improve the end-to-end performance of applications. Several significant research challenges remain to be addressed before the widespread deployment of an integrated framework for networking, caching and computing to become practical. The short term objective of this research is to address these challenges by contributing to the development of network architectures and protocols, virtual resources management and orchestrations, and cross-layer designs that will make integrated networking, caching and computing for future wireless networks more efficient and effective; and thereby make their widespread deployment practical and commercially viable. The long term objective of this research is to contribute to the advancement of wireless networks technologies through the next generation and beyond. The disruptive technologies resulting from the proposed research have the potential of making significant impacts on the evolution of emerging technical standards or leading to the development of new technical standards of wireless networks. The outcome of the proposed research also provides potential commercial and technology transfer to the Canadian industry. The scientific approach will be based on sound research principles involving comprehensive literature survey and analytical modeling combined with extensive numerical analysis and computer simulations. This research will prepare a number of highly qualified personnel at the postgraduate and undergraduate level to serve the growing needs of the information and communications technologies industry in Canada.