5G technology brings 1ms data latency (between mobile device and base station) , while providing 1-10 Gbps of speed (100X more 4G) , as you can see below:
U.S. researchers have discovered that the human brain can interpret images that the eye sees in just 13 milliseconds. With 1 ms of point to point latency, 5G has surpassed the human brain processing speed.
This advancement in latency and bandwidth opens plethora of new opportunities, such as supporting mission critical, time sensitive applications e.g AR and VR applications where digital objects are over-layered on physical world and user interaction is in real or near real time.
For 5G to support new types of applications which requires ultra low latency, processing of data has to be closer to user and that’s the basic objective behind Edge computing.
Edge computing is brining data processing near to customer from existing data center, where server is located. That data center can be private datacenter or public cloud provider data center
As we can see in picture below, a video game application has requirement of ultra low latency ( >10 ms). If game server is hosted at centralized cloud location, latency would be appx. 500ms or more.
What is MEC
MEC is mutli access compute, an edge application server
defined by ETSI and included as part of
5G service architecture by 3GPP. The
basic idea behind MEC is that by running applications and performing related
processing tasks closer to the cellular customer, network congestion is reduced
and applications perform better. As in eksample above Application
server(green box) can be designed as MEC with video analytics as core
functionality. Apart of providing
generic architecture of MEC application,
MEC Service APIs
ETSI has also defined MEC service APIs with can be
used by developers to develop edge application. Details of released MEC APIs
can be found here: https://forge.etsi.org/gitlab/mec
The original API frameworks released are as following:
GS MEC 009 —
General Principles for Mobile Edge Service APIs: These principles are the processes for
documenting RESTful multi-access edge service APIs, including naming
conventions, directions for making APIs compliant to the OpenAPI specification,
and outlining API patterns.
GS
MEC 010-2 — Mobile Edge Management; Part 2: Application Lifecycle, Rules and
Requirements Management: This standard details the application’s lifecycle
management while using the edge of a network.
GS
MEC 011 — Mobile Edge Platform Application Enablement: This standard provides how the
information flows between the application and the platform, what information is
necessary for the communication to work, and illustrates the data model.
GS
MEC 012 — Radio Network Information API: This provides radio
network-related information to mobile edge applications and to mobile edge
platforms
GS
MEC 013 — Location API: The purpose of this API is that the “edge platform
or applications perform the active device location tracking, location-based
service recommendation, etc.”
GS
MEC 014 — UE Identity API: This API tags the user’s
equipment (UE) to map it in the network operator’s system so the system can
enforce its traffic rules for that UE.
GS
MEC 015 — Bandwidth Management API: The API for the
Bandwidth Management Service (BWMS) allows applications to register for the
bandwidth allocation needed to run.
Above mentioned, MEC
service APIs bridge two the distinct
worlds : 1) global communication service
providers (CSPs) and 2) application developers that need to use services
exposed by the CSPs.
By providing these API frameworks, Telecom has opened doors to application developers worldwide to develop AR & VR types applications using 5G edge computing technology. For eksampel, now VR gaming developers can use Bandwidth Management APIs to register required bandwidth in order to provide optimal experience to their users. Developers can directly connect with Telecom network infra, and communicate their needs, rather than work in silo.
Reference:
https://www.etsi.org/technologies/multi-access-edge-compu
https://www.etsi.org/images/files/ETSIWhitePapers/etsi_wp28_mec_in_5G_FINAL.pdf
https://www.3gpp.org/news-events/partners-news/1969-mec
https://www.sdxcentral.com/edge/definitions/mec-applications/
