Toward Enabled Industrial Verticals in 5G: A Survey on MEC-Based Approaches to Provisioning and Flexibility

The increasing number of heterogeneous devices connected to the Internet, together with tight 5G requirements have generated new challenges for designing network infrastructures. Industrial verticals such as automotive, smart city and eHealthcare (among others) need secure, low latency and reliable communications. To meet these stringent requirements, computing resources have to be moved closer to the user, from the core to the edge of the network. In this context, ETSI standardized Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC). However, due to the cost of resources, MEC provisioning has to be carefully designed and evaluated. This survey firstly overviews standards, with particular emphasis on 5G and virtualization of network functions, then it addresses flexibility of MEC smart resource deployment and its migration capabilities. This survey explores how the MEC is used and how it will enable industrial verticals.

Automated summary

The increasing number of diverse devices connected to the internet and the strict requirements of 5G have posed new challenges for network infrastructure design. In order to meet the secure, low latency, and reliable communication needs of industrial verticals, computing resources must be moved closer to the edge of the network. Standardizing MEC and efficiently allocating resources will be key to future development.