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）是美国国家科学基金会的一个项目，旨在促进以人为本的基础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的创新，发展经济，创造就业机会，使公共部门提供的服务更有效率，加强社区，促进机会平等，保护自然环境，加强国家安全，并推动美国的领导地位。为了实现这些目标，需要来自科学和工程学科的专业知识。SAI侧重于人类推理和决策、治理以及社会和文化过程的知识如何使有效的基础设施的建设和维护能够改善生活和社会，并以技术和工程的进步为基础。信息技术基础设施使各种各样的应用程序能够服务于当代生活的几乎每个方面。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）现在被普遍使用。更高速的有线和无线（5G）接入的引入正在进一步推动云计算的边界。商业移动网络运营商现在正在投资多接入边缘云（MEC）技术，在这种技术中，个人和小型企业支持共享计算资源的自组织联系，以克服长途光纤的一些限制。如果MEC平台的部署完全由大型服务提供商的私人投资，那么很可能许多人将无法获得服务或仅由单一提供商提供服务，从而使许多最终用户和社区无法访问或访问过于昂贵或无法满足其服务质量需求的服务。该SAI规划项目发展了开放协作公共多接入边缘云（pMEC）的概念。公共边缘云被设计为通过社区内未充分利用的计算能力的自愿贡献来进行自组织。公共边缘云基础设施使服务不足社区的用户能够访问大量、近距离的计算能力，而无需依赖大型网络运营商的昂贵服务。通过扩大对美国互联网和计算基础设施的访问，公共边缘云能力促进并维持了美国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，其中技术开发由业务模型以及促进最终用户采用的成本和性能属性提供信息。该SAI规划项目侧重于pMEC的技术考虑，以及具有最终用户采用属性的可行经济和商业模式，以实现和维持广泛部署。该项目为分布式公共边缘云部署开发初步架构级设计，确定对5G和云的新兴技术标准的必要增强。它还为拟议的社区边缘云制定了激励兼容的业务和合作治理模型计划，以激励初始部署和可持续运营。一个小型的概念验证原型演示了基本的pMEC概念。开发协作以评估利益相关者对采用和参与提议的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取决于越来越多的多学科合作研究，利用社会、行为和经济科学与计算机科学和工程合作。该奖项由社会、行为和经济科学理事会（SBE）和计算机与信息科学与工程理事会（CISE）支持。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.