Converging Mobile Edge Computing, Fog Computing, and IoT Quality Requirements

This position paper proposes a novel and integrated architectural model for the design of new 5G-enabled supports, capable of synergically leveraging Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) and fog computing capabilities together. In particular, we claim the relevance of dynamically distributing monitoring and control intelligence close to sensor/actuator localities in order to reduce latency in the control loop and to enable some forms of at least partial decentralized autonomous control even in absence of (temporary) cloud computing availability. This scenario significantly benefits from the possibility of having functions that are dynamically migrated from the global cloud to the local 5G-enhanced edges (and possibly vice versa), in order to best fit the characteristics of the deployment environment and of the supported Internet of Things (IoT) applications at provisioning time. Among the others, the paper details and discusses the technical challenges associated with i) the quality-constrained exploitation of container-based virtualized resources at edge nodes and ii) the quality-constrained integration of IoT gateways. The reported use cases help to practically understand the benefits of the proposed integrated architecture and shed light on most relevant and open related technical challenges.