Home edge computing (HEC): Design of a new edge computing technology for achieving ultra-low latency

Abstract

Edge computing systems (Cloudlet, Fog Computing, Multi-access Edge Computing) provide numerous benefits to information technology: reduced latency, improved bandwidth, battery lifetime, etc. Despite all the benefits, edge computing systems have several issues that could significantly reduce the performance of certain applications. Indeed, current edge computing technologies do not assure ultra-low latency for real-time applications and they encounter overloading issues for data processing. To solve the aforementioned issues, we propose Home Edge Computing (HEC): a new three-tier edge computing architecture that provides data storage and processing in close proximity to the users. The term “Home” in Home Edge Computing does not restrain our work to the homes of the users, we take into account other places where the users could connect to the Internet such as: companies, shopping malls, hospitals, etc. Our three-tier architecture is composed of a Home Server, an Edge Server and a Central Cloud which we also find in traditional edge computing architectures. The Home Server is located within the vicinities of the users which allow the achievement of ultra-low latency for applications that could be processed by the said server; this also help reduce the amount of data that could be treated in the Edge Server and the Central Cloud. We demonstrate the validity of our architecture by leveraging the EdgeCloudSim simulation platform. The results of the simulation show that our proposal can, in fact, help achieve ultra-low latency and reduce overloading issues.