Five Driving Forces of Multi-Access Edge Computing

TL;DR

This paper explores five key technologies—NFV, SDN, Network Slicing, ICN, and IoT—that drive the adoption and integration of Multi-Access Edge Computing in 5G networks, highlighting challenges and future directions.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of how these five technologies enable MEC in 5G, offering insights into their interrelations and integration challenges.

Findings

Identifies five key technologies accelerating MEC adoption.

Analyzes the relationship between MEC and 5G technologies.

Discusses open challenges and future research directions.

Abstract

The emergence of Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) technology aims at extending cloud computing capabilities to the edge of the wireless access networks. MEC provides real-time, high-bandwidth, low-latency access to radio network resources, allowing operators to open their networks to a new ecosystem and value chain. Moreover, it will provide a new insight to the design of future 5th Generation (5G) wireless systems. This paper describes five key technologies, including Network Function Vitalization (NFV), Software Defined Networking (SDN), Network Slicing, Information Centric Networking (ICN) and Internet of Things (IoT), that intensify the widespread of MEC and its adoption. Our goal is to provide the associativity between MEC and these five driving technologies in 5G context while identifying the open challenges, future directions, and tangible integration paths.