Development of MEC system for indigenous 5G Test-Bed

Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) is an evolving technology and considered as one of the critical enablers for technologies to meet the IMT definition of 5G communications. It integrates the service provider’s network with the high-performance computation facility to cater to various applications such as augmented reality, vision applications, etc., at the network edge. Thus, reducing the overall latency and preserving the bandwidth to send the complete data to the centralized data centers for processing instead. Furthermore, MEC opens up tremendous business opportunities for telecommunication companies by offering a service platform for deploying various services specific to consumers and industry at the network edge. In this work, we have demonstrated a full-fledged MEC architecture, including its entities, and integrated with 5G core following ETSI 5G specification with an application deployment use-case. The various MEC and 5G core components are instantiated in the virtual machine as a guest; the complete data path and control path is established between all core components following a service-based architecture. The MEC system developed is a part of the indigenous 5G Test-Bed project and follows the ETSI architecture. The developed system is suitable for executing various applications that require data offloading, extensive storage, and computing resources. Thus, our working MEC system establishes a proof of concept and closely resembles a real-world deployment of MEC system in 5G environment.