Servicing delay sensitive pervasive communication through adaptable width channelization for supporting mobile edge computing

Abstract

Over the last fifteen years, wireless local area networks (WLANs) have been populated on large variety of pervasive devices hosting heterogeneous applications. Pervasive edge computing has accelerated more distributed network applications for these devices, eliminating the round-trip to help in achieving zero latency dream. However, These applications require significantly variable data rates for effective functioning, especially in pervasive computing. The static bandwidth of frequency channelization in current WLANs strictly restricts the maximum achievable data rate by a network station. This static behavior spawns two major drawbacks: under-utilization of scarce spectrum resources and less support to delay sensitive applications such as voice and video.To this point, if the computing is moved to the edge of WLANs to reduce the frequency of communications, the pervasive devices can be provided with better services during the communication and networking. Thus, we aim to distribute spectrum resources among pervasive devices based upon delay sensitivity of applications while simultaneously maintain the fair channel access semantics of medium access control (MAC) layer of WLANs. Henceforth, ultra-low latency, efficiency and reliability of spectrum resources can be assured.In this paper, two novel algorithms have been proposed for adaptive channelization to offer rational distribution of spectrum resources among pervasive edge nodes based on their bandwidth requirement and assorted ambient conditions. The proposed algorithms have been implemented on a real test bed of commercially available universal software radio peripheral (USRP) devices. Thorough investigations have been carried out to enumerate the effect of dynamic bandwidth channelization on parameters such as medium utilization, achievable throughput, service delay, channel access fairness and bit error rate. The achieved empirical results demonstrate that we can optimally enhance the network wide throughput by almost 30% by using channels of adaptable bandwidths.