Edge computing and 5G network integration for mobility-aware service deployments

The growing scale of smart city sensing devices and infrastructure entails a wide variety of available sensing information that can provide valuable insights into user mobility and traffic congestion. This information can be used to optimize service delivery through the development of mobility-aware services. 5G systems and their associated technologies provide an ideal environment with capabilities to efficiently support edge computing and bring the processing and storage resources closer to the end users, which results in a latency and backhaul usage reduction. This article proposes the integration of edge computing in 5G operator network and a mobility/road-side infrastructure with edge orchestration to provide mobility-aware services to the end-users on demand. With this approach, a service instantiation can be translated into resource allocation both on the 5G platform through multi-slicing and the edge infrastructure. Resource management is then optimized for the users on the move by continuously allocating the necessary virtual network slices, processing, and storage resources in the appropriate locations for the user to consume its services while maintaining the appropriate QoS levels and optimized resource distribution in the edge platform. This approach is evaluated in a real mobile 5G network with emulated Radio Access Network (RAN) resources through two use cases based on infotainment and emergency services. The results show that the approach is efficient in using mobility, service requirements, and platform’s resources information to enable a proactive resource reservation both in the 5G base stations and edge computing nodes throughout the path traversed by the users. • Smart City sensing and mobility information can be used to optimize service delivery. • The integration of mobility, MEC and 5G enable the instantiation of emergency services. • Allocation of the network and computing resources, maintaining the required QoS levels. • Results successfully demonstrate proactive resource reservation in both 5G and MEC.