Sunday, July 12, 2020

5G MEC API

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.

By hosting game server at edge location, latency targets can be met.  We can also see that game server has moved to edge but the data back-up server (non real time application) has remained at centralized cloud location. Reason for this design is that edge location should have smaller footprint that centralized location and hence only mission critical functionality should be hosted at Edge. Other non mission critical functionality should be at centralized location. 






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/




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