Mobile Edge Computing for Ultra-Reliable and Low-Latency Communications

Driven by the recent technological advances and the flourishing innovative applications, mobile edge computing (MEC) has emerged as a promising computing paradigm, aiming to extend cloud computing services from the centralized cloud to the edges of networks. Indeed, it is an essential component in the fifth generation architecture, which can empower users with rapid and powerful computation, cache capacity, energy efficiency, mobility, location, and context awareness support. However, as network access methods become diverse, how to ensure ultra-reliable and low-latency communications in MEC is a very challenging task. This article tries to present a comprehensive survey of relevant research and technological developments in MEC. We first highlight the advantages of MEC in comparison with mobile cloud computing, based on which we then make a holistic overview of MEC, including its related architectures and key enablers. Subsequently, we introduce several specific themes and the existing techniques in MEC, where we are particularly concerned with efficient communication techniques and reliable mechanisms in MEC. Furthermore, we elaborate on the evolution of MEC standardization and discuss several typical application scenarios. Finally, we strive to shed light on some challenges and potential research directions for MEC, which may facilitate the transformation of MEC from theory to practice.