Real-Time Service Migration in Edge Networks: A Survey

With the rapid proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and mobile applications and the growing demand for low-latency services, edge computing has emerged as a transformative paradigm that brings computation and storage closer to end users. However, the dynamic nature and limited resources of edge networks bring challenges such as load imbalance and high latency while satisfying user requests. Service migration, the dynamic redeployment of service instances across distributed edge nodes, has become a key enabler for solving these challenges and optimizing edge network characteristics. Moreover, the low-latency nature of edge computing requires that service migration strategies must be in real time in order to ensure latency requirements. Thus, this paper presents a systematic survey of real-time service migration in edge networks. Specifically, we first introduce four network architectures and four basic models for real-time service migration. We then summarize four research motivations for real-time service migration and the real-time guarantee introduced during the implementation of migration strategies. To support these motivations, we present key techniques for solving the task of real-time service migration and how these algorithms and models facilitate the real-time performance of migration. We also explore latency-sensitive application scenarios, such as smart cities, smart homes, and smart manufacturing, where real-time service migration plays a critical role in sustaining performance and adaptability under dynamic conditions. Finally, we summarize the key challenges and outline promising future research directions for real-time service migration. This survey aims to provide a structured and in-depth theoretical foundation to guide future research on real-time service migration in edge networks.