Application Synchronization Among Multiple MEC Servers in Connected Vehicle Scenarios
Tiia Ojanperä, Hans van den Berg, Wieger IJntema, Ramon de Souza Schwartz, Miodrag Djurica · 2018
Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) is an emerging technology aimed to improve the communication latency and scalability e.g. of cloud-based connected vehicle applications and services. This is accomplished by bringing services closer to the end users, that is, to the network edge. In a high-mobility scenario, such as one involving vehicles, there will be a need for handovers between different MEC servers in order to maintain the required communication latency. Part of the application data may also be relevant to multiple MEC servers, covering overlapping geographical areas or being hosted by different network operators. This paper focuses on these situations and studies the problem of maintaining service continuity and synchronization of relevant data among multiple MEC servers to support vehicular applications. The analysis is conducted in the context of two example applications with different requirements, namely platoon management and shared world model, with promising results regarding their suitability for future implementation.