SatEC: A 5G Satellite Edge Computing Framework Based on Microservice Architecture

Abstract

As outlined in the 3Gpp Release 16, 5G satellite access is important for 5G network development in the future. A terrestrial-satellite network integrated with 5G has the characteristics of low delay, high bandwidth, and ubiquitous coverage. A few researchers have proposed integrated schemes for such a network; however, these schemes do not consider the possibility of achieving optimization of the delay characteristic by changing the computing mode of the 5G satellite network. We propose a 5G satellite edge computing framework (5GsatEC), which aims to reduce delay and expand network coverage. This framework consists of embedded hardware platforms and edge computing microservices in satellites. To increase the flexibility of the framework in complex scenarios, we unify the resource management of the central processing unit (CPU), graphics processing unit (GPU), and field-programmable gate array (FPGA); we divide the services into three types: system services, basic services, and user services. In order to verify the performance of the framework, we carried out a series of experiments. The results show that 5GsatEC has a broader coverage than the ground 5G network. The results also show that 5GsatEC has lower delay, a lower packet loss rate, and lower bandwidth consumption than the 5G satellite network.

Satellite Communications in the New Space Era: A Survey and Future Challenges

“…Thanks to the wide coverage, satellites can be used for task off-loading from mobile users which are out of range from terrestrial MEC servers. It is shown in [277], [278] that with a proper network virtualization algorithm, a satellite MEC can significantly reduce latency and improve the energy efficiency compared to a stand-alone 5G terrestrial network.…”

A Game-Theoretic Approach to Computation Offloading in Satellite Edge Computing

“…In this section, we show illustrative results to demonstrate the performance of the proposed algorithm. In the simulation, the task generation rate λ i = 0.15 + 0.0075(i − 1) tasks/second, the average number of computing resourcesc i = 1+0.5(i−1) billion cycles, the second moments c 2 i = 1.6c 2 i , the average size of taskd i = 1+0.1(i − 1) MB, the second moments [11], [23]. We choose the Iridium constellation as the satellite system in the simulation.…”

“…Therefore, it has recently been widely used in both industry and academia [8]- [10]. Recently, some studies have combined satellite with edge computing to deploy MEC servers on satellites for lower latency and more generalpurpose applications [11]- [15]. Satellite edge computing is becoming an emerging topic and technology.…”

Nanosystems, Edge Computing, and the Next Generation Computing Systems

“…The mobile EC (MEC) distributes part of the computing resources to the edge of the network, thus saving bandwidth and reducing delay. For further improvements, a 5G satellite EC framework has been proposed [353] in addition to existing EC for terrestrial 5G communication. In addition to EC’s potential to overcome the problems anticipated for cloud computing, further capabilities may be created by exploiting quantum effects that drastically boost satellite communication, as evident from a recent report, where teleportation of single-photon qubits was employed for ground-to-satellite communication [349].…”