QoS-aware resource allocation and fault tolerant operation in hybrid SDN using stochastic network calculus

Abstract

Mobile edge computing (MEC) is a key feature of next-generation mobile networks aimed at providing a variety of services for different applications by performing related processing tasks closer to the users. With the advent of the next-generation mobile networks, researchers have turned their attention to various aspects of edge computing in an effort to leverage the new capabilities offered by 5G. So, the integration of software defined networking (SDN) and MEC techniques was seriously considered to facilitate the orchestration and management of Mobile Edge Hosts (MEH). Edge clouds can be installed as an interface between the local servers and the core to provide the required services based on the known concept of the SDN networks. Nonetheless, the problem of reliability and fault tolerance will be of great importance in such networks. The paper introduced a dynamic architecture that focuses on the end-to-end mobility support required to maintain service continuity and quality of service. This paper also presents an SDN control plane with stochastic network calculus (SNC) framework to control MEC data flows. In accordance with the entrance processes of different QoS-class data flows, closed-form problems were formulated to determine the correlation between resource utilization and the violation probability of each data flow. Compared to other solutions investigated in the literature, the proposed approach exhibits a significant increase in the throughput distributed over the active links of mobile edge hosts. It also proved that the outage index and the system’s aggregate data rate can be effectively improved by up to 32%.