In the next decade, communication technologies will be dominated by the fifth generation (5G) of cellular networks, which is currently under deployment in many countries. Although at the moment 5G consists of an improvement in the performance of 4G, the future versions of 5G are expected to revolutionize wireless communications.
One of the technologies that will make the 5G revolution possible is the Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC). The 5G MEC consists of a cloud platform that is deployed close to the 5G end user. In this way, the 5G MEC will make possible the future 5G applications that require low delays, with a high impact on use cases such as eHealth, Smart City, Industry 4.0, and automotive.
Motivated by the important role of security and dependability in the maturity of a technology, 5G-MODaNeI aims to improve both these aspects in 5G MEC. To achieve this, 5G-MODaNeI focuses on allocating together the network resources of 5G and the data resources of MEC.
5G-MODaNeI consists of three main parts. In the first part, the risks and the vulnerabilities for attacks and failures in 5G MEC will be identified. The impact of joint data and network resource allocation on security and dependability in 5G MEC will be determined. In the second part, innovative and intelligent solutions will be created. These solutions will allocate the network and data resources to maximize the security and dependability in 5G MEC. In the third part, a 5G-MEC experiment in a vehicular scenario will be developed and used to test the proposed solutions.
In the first years of the project, the standards of MEC provided by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) have been studied. The study also focused on the integration of the MEC architecture with the 5G architecture and the use of other general virtualization technologies, such as Network Function Virtualization, in implementing MEC. The project has continued by evaluating the security, dependability, and performance aspects of the 5G-MEC architecture. The state of the art has been analyzed and the challenges of jointly addressing the three aspects have been discussed.
A first evaluation of the dependability of a 5G-MEC system has been performed by proposing a model of the system availability, i.e., the readiness of providing a service with the desired requirements. The results show the importance of having proper redundancy and dependable software in the management elements of the 5G and MEC. Afterwards, the model has been extended to include security attacks and connectivity between the elements of the 5G-MEC system. The results highlight the importance of the attack detection and recovery. Anyway, the impact of simultaneous attacks and failures of multiple elements of the 5G-MEC system on the overall system availability should be evaluated.
Novel solutions to allocate data and network resources in a 5G-MEC scenario have been proposed. These solutions are based on various techniques: heuristic, mathematical optimization, and Machine Learning (ML). One set of the works is also addressing the security and dependability of ML-based solutions, which may be attacked by adversaries or subjected to failures. Another work proposes a ML-based solution for the MEC application migration, i.e., moving the MEC application from one MEC server to another. The MEC application migration is due to the mobility of the user that uses the MEC application or the failure of the MEC server where the MEC application is running. This work has been extended to also consider location privacy in the MEC application migration. Another work proposes a ML-based solution for the selection of the path between a user and the related MEC server by optimizing multiple performance metrics.
A hybrid 5G-MEC testbed has been developed. The testbed integrates various 5G and MEC simulators and emulators, includes actual MEC servers, and proposes a controller. The controller allows the experimentation on MEC application migration and path selection. The controller interacts with the MEC framework by using standard ETSI MEC interfaces and allows the use of complex migration solutions.
In conclusion, the impact of the orchestration of 5G-MEC systems on the future smart cities has been analyzed and discussed.
Target Audience: multidisciplinary academic community, public admin, TLC and data companies, ICT users
Research outcomes:
- Identification of the state of the art and future perspectives on
-- 5G and MEC by jointly considering dependability, security, and performance
-- Resource allocation in 5G-MEC system
-- 5G-MEC testbeds for V2X applications
-- Resource allocation in ICT systems that jointly considers dependability and security
-- Joint modelling security and dependability
- Characterization and improvement of security and dependability in 5G-MEC system
-- Techniques to improve security in 5G-MEC system
-- Model dependability of 5G-MEC system
-- Joint model security and dependability of 5G-MEC system
- Formulation of resource allocation problems in 5G-MEC system
-- Multiple problems with various objectives (economical costs, quality of experience, performance, dependability, and security)
-- Some of the objectives were considered both individually and jointly
-- The problems considered the allocation of network slices, the relocation of 5G-MEC applications, the path computation in 5G-MEC system
- Development of intelligent solutions for efficient 5G-MEC applications
- The formulated problems were solved by using various approaches, such as heuristics, mathematical optimization, and machine learning
- Evaluation of the proposed solutions led to
-- Discovery of the potential of joint allocation of data and network resources in 5G MEC system
-- Improvement of security and dependability maturity of 5G-MEC system
- Implementation of a hybrid 5G-MEC testbed
- Verification of some of the proposed solutions in the 5G-MEC testbed
- Identification of the potential impact of orchestration of 5G-MEC system on future smart city
Interdisciplinary and international collaborations:
- Many coauthored publications with the project partners, University of Pisa and University of Bucharest
- Involvement of master students from UiS and project partners, whose theses led to research papers
- Collaboration with another UiS PhD student, which led to a publication
- Collaboration with the University of Padua, which led to a publication
- Interdisciplinary collaboration with colleague from UiS on smart city
Impacts:
- In the future, the proposed solutions may lead to
-- Enhancement of security and dependability of future 5G applications
-- Enabling new advanced real-time mission-critical 5G applications
-- Creation of new business opportunities
- To maximize the impact, there was an intense activity on smart city
-- Participation to Innoasis talk with video available online
-- Organization of two Nordic Edge symposiums and talks
-- Presentations at UiS and CTU Prague within an EEA Norway project
- Cooperation with network operator for life-long education course on 5G
- Contact with companies for possible use cases, such as tactical drones and autonomous vehicles
- Cross collaboration with Sintef's NFR-funded Raksha project
-- Possible future project on 6G
The fifth generation (5G) of cellular networks is currently consisting in a huge improvement of performance with respect to 4G, but the future releases of 5G are going to revolutionize the wireless communications. One of the technologies that will make the 5G revolution possible is the Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC). The MEC in 5G consists in the provision of computing and storage resources within the edge of the Radio Access Network and is enabled by virtualization and softwarization technologies, such as Software-Defined Networking (SDN), Network Function Virtualization (NFV), and Network Slicing. The 5G MEC will effectively enable real-time 5G applications in use cases such as eHealth, Smart City, Industry 4.0, and automotive.
The project focuses on security and dependability in the orchestration of data and network resources in 5G MEC. The project has three main objectives: investigate and characterize security and dependability in the orchestration of data and network resources in 5G MEC; develop and analyze intelligent solutions for jointly orchestrating data and network resources for dependability and security in 5G MEC; develop a 5G-MEC testbed in automotive and verify the proposed solutions.
In the project, models will identify the risks and the vulnerabilities for attacks and failures in 5G MEC. The impact of joint data and network resource allocation on security and dependability in 5G MEC will be determined. Moreover, after formulating the problem of resource allocation for security and dependability in 5G MEC, innovative and intelligent solutions will be proposed. The solutions will allow both long-term design and real-time adaptation for maximizing security and dependability in 5G MEC and the future 5G applications. Finally, a 5G MEC testbed in automotive will be developed and it will be used to analyze the performance of the proposed solution in an experimental scenario.
