Edge Computing Simulation Platforms: A Technology Survey.

As the interest in Edge Computing (EC) increases, the need for platforms to support building and evaluating EC based systems becomes more evident. EC has been defined as an extension of the cloud, an architecture that consists of moving part of the cloud resources to the edge of the network. EC does not pose any technological limitations on how it needs to be implemented, however, to be considered EC, a set of features need to be supported. Given the scale, heterogeneity, and complexity of the EC environment (e.g., hardware and software), being able to perform real experiments would require substantial investments, without being able to capture all the possible scenarios. In the cloud space, simulation has been used extensively to study and evaluate architectural and quality variations. Simulation platforms have been developed to reduce costs and speed up the design and evaluation phases. However, in many cases, they can be limited to specific properties or application domains. In this paper, we provide an overview of EC simulation platforms, looking first at the main EC features, then comparing the platforms in terms of the features they support.