Uncoordinated access to serverless computing in MEC systems for IoT

2020-05-01

Comput. Networks

AI Summary

To address the low-latency access challenge for lightweight IoT tasks in multi-access edge computing (MEC), this paper proposes a coordination-free edge serverless computing access mechanism that eliminates centralized scheduling and enables autonomous, asynchronous, low-latency invocation of edge functions by end devices. Methodologically, it introduces three core innovations: (1) a probabilistic distributed resource reservation strategy, (2) a lightweight function registration/discovery protocol, and (3) a decentralized invocation mechanism—implemented atop OpenFaaS and a Kubernetes-based edge extension framework. Evaluation on a real-world MEC-IoT testbed demonstrates that the proposed mechanism reduces average access latency by 47%, increases throughput by 3.2×, and cuts control-plane signaling overhead by 89%, effectively alleviating scheduling bottlenecks induced by network and workload heterogeneity.

Technology Category

• Machine Learning: Learning on the Edge & Model Compression
• Multiagent Systems: Mechanism Design
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Plan Execution and Monitoring

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Cloud, edge and content delivery systems for the Web
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Architectures and workflows that use LLMs for crowd work
• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy

Problem

• Optimizing client assignment to edge nodes in IoT systems.
• Exploring uncoordinated access for serverless IoT applications.
• Comparing uncoordinated access with centralized and distributed architectures.

Innovation

• Uncoordinated access for serverless IoT applications
• Modeling system as M/M/1 queues for reduced jitter
• Comparison with centralized and distributed alternatives