Resource allocation and computation offloading in cloud-assisted wireless networks

Ayman Nasih Salman Younis
2022
The next radio generations of mobile networks, Fifth Generation (5G) and beyond, are expected to speed up the transition from monolithic and inflexible networks to agile and distributed networking elements that rely on "virtualization", "softwarization", openness, intelligent and yet fully interoperable Radio Access Network (RAN) components. At the same time, the increasing popularity of computation-intensive applications on mobile devices has contributed to the overwhelming mobile traffic
more » ... e that is pushing against the boundary of the current communication networks' capacity. Besides, mobile platforms are becoming the predominant medium of access to Internet services due to a tremendous increase in their computation and communication capabilities. In light of this, cloud-assisted wireless networks are promising solutions that unite wireless networks and cloud computing to deliver cloud services directly from the network edges. The three emerging paradigms for cloud-assisted wireless networks are: Cloud Radio Access Network (C-RAN), in which the baseband resources are pooled at a Base Band Unit (BBU) based on the fundamentals of centralization and virtualization; Mobile-Edge Computing (MEC), which provides cloud computing and storage capabilities to enable rich services and applications in close proximity to the end-users; and Next Generation RAN (NG-RAN), in which the functional splitting technique is utilized to flexibly balance the radio and computation processes at Central Units (CUs) and Distributed Units (DUs). These paradigms are complementary and have unique justifications within the 5G and beyond ecosystem. The centralized nature of C-RAN provides a higher degree of cooperation in the network to address the capacity fluctuation and to increase the spectral and energy efficiency, whereas the MEC paradigm is useful in reducing service latency and improving localized user experience; on the other hand, NG-RAN provides flexible distribution of computation and radio capabilities at Base Stations (BSs). Th [...]
doi:10.7282/t3-4jxh-bf31 fatcat:2dvl3zwcjbaxlix64mmo26bmf4