Context-Awareness Enhances 5G Multi-Access Edge Computing Reliability

TL;DR

This paper introduces a context-aware decentralized authentication architecture for 5G MEC that improves reliability and reduces costs by leveraging network context and mobility models.

Contribution

It presents a novel decentralized authentication framework utilizing context information and Markov models to enhance MEC reliability and cost-efficiency in 5G networks.

Findings

Achieves a balance between network cost and MEC reliability.

Demonstrates effectiveness through numerical simulations.

Supports flexible and low-cost local authentication.

Abstract

The fifth generation (5G) mobile telecommunication network is expected to support Multi- Access Edge Computing (MEC), which intends to distribute computation tasks and services from the central cloud to the edge clouds. Towards ultra-responsive, ultra-reliable and ultra-low-latency MEC services, the current mobile network security architecture should enable a more decentralized approach for authentication and authorization processes. This paper proposes a novel decentralized authentication architecture that supports flexible and low-cost local authentication with the awareness of context information of network elements such as user equipment and virtual network functions. Based on a Markov model for backhaul link quality, as well as a random walk mobility model with mixed mobility classes and traffic scenarios, numerical simulations have demonstrated that the proposed approach is able to achieve a flexible balance between the network operating cost and the MEC reliability.