5G Standalone Network Slicing Enabled on Top of a Multi-Access Edge Computing Environment

With the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the rapid expansion of new applications, it is becoming increasingly crucial to bring data processing and storage closer to users. Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) emerges as a crucial solution as it enables fast access to computing resources for users by embedding cloud computing capabilities at the network edge. Simultaneously, network slicing (NS) allows multiple logical networks on a shared network infrastructure, each dedicated to a specific service or application. MEC and NS synergy is imperative to provide high flexibility, better resource management, extremely low latency, and high reliability to users. We present in this paper a MEC testbed with 5G Standalone (SA) network slicing support. The performance tests results are concordant with the needs of most IoT applications and real-time critical applications. Additionally, the proposed system was validated by a video streaming analysis application.