Edge Information Hub-Empowered 6G NTN: Latency-Oriented Resource Orchestration and Configuration

TL;DR

This paper proposes an edge information hub for 6G non-terrestrial networks that optimizes resource orchestration and configuration to significantly reduce latency in disaster response scenarios.

Contribution

It introduces a systematic design for an edge information hub that integrates communication, computing, and storage, and provides an optimal resource orchestration algorithm for latency minimization.

Findings

Proposed an optimal resource orchestration algorithm for latency reduction.

Demonstrated the scheme's effectiveness through simulations in emergency rescue scenarios.

Provided principles for resource configuration considering payload constraints.

Abstract

Quick response to disasters is crucial for saving lives and reducing loss. This requires low-latency uploading of situation information to the remote command center. Since terrestrial infrastructures are often damaged in disaster areas, non-terrestrial networks (NTNs) are preferable to provide network coverage, and mobile edge computing (MEC) could be integrated to improve the latency performance. Nevertheless, the communications and computing in MEC-enabled NTNs are strongly coupled, which complicates the system design. In this paper, an edge information hub (EIH) that incorporates communication, computing and storage capabilities is proposed to synergize communication and computing and enable systematic design. We first address the joint data scheduling and resource orchestration problem to minimize the latency for uploading sensing data. The problem is solved using an optimal resource orchestration algorithm. On that basis, we propose the principles for resource configuration of the EIH considering payload constraints on size, weight and energy supply. Simulation results demonstrate the superiority of our proposed scheme in reducing the overall upload latency, thus enabling quick emergency rescue.