Resource Calendaring for Mobile Edge Computing in 5G Networks

Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) is a key technology for the deployment of next generation (5G and beyond) mobile networks, specifically for reducing the latency experienced by mobile users which require ultra-low latency, high bandwidth, as well as real-time access to the radio network. In this paper, we propose an optimization framework that considers several key aspects of the resource allocation problem for MEC, by carefully modeling and optimizing the allocation of network resources including computation and storage capacity available on network nodes as well as link capacity. Specifically, both an exact optimization model and an effective heuristic are provided, jointly optimizing (1) the connections admission decision (2) their scheduling, also called calendaring (3) and routing as well as (4) the decision of which nodes will serve such connections and (5) the amount of processing and storage capacity reserved on the chosen nodes. Numerical experiments are conducted in several real-size network scenarios, which demonstrate that the heuristic performs close to the optimum in all the considered network scenarios, while exhibiting a low computing time.