IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - March/April 2021 - 85

are operating the AR bots. The remote connectivity between the robots and the control station
is established through the MEPM. MEPM, in
accordance to the requirements of the AR bot to
be launched (depending on the requirements of
services out of decontamination, logistics, or
interacting with the patients), will request
the Virtualization Infrastructure Manager to
form a virtual machine (VM) with intrinsic
resources to handle a single AR bot. These AR
bots will be embedded with 5G radio transceivers to enable wireless and rapid communication with the IBS.
The Mobile Edge Host (MEH) formed as a VM,
launches the required functions as Mobile Edge
Applications (ME Apps), that are governed by
the mobile edge platform (MEP). The AR related
function of caching, computing, and visualizing
are handled by separate ME Apps,16 where the
necessary sensory inputs are conveyed through
the Robot telemetry service. The key significance of this service in contrast to a typical AR
system is its integration of the robotic control
system. The robot control station is directly
linked to the robot control platform inside the
MEH. The design and formation of the robot controlling platform launched as an ME App is relying on the feedback, trajectory planning, control
interfacing (Brain computer interface, touch
based, or haptic), and telemetry methods. Thus,
resource specifications of each MEH might vary
from each other. As this service is of localized
nature, MEHs controlling the AR bots do not
require an Internet connectivity. However, internal network and protocols operating within the
MEH should feature dynamism. Therefore, we
are proposing light-weight virtualization or containerization for implementing the ME Apps, and
the MEP.22

MEC Assisted Smart Medical Data
Aggregation/Patient Monitoring and Treatment
The main objective of this use case is to
aggregate vital medical information related to
COVID-19 patients remotely while retrieving
them for diagnosis and treatment in accordance
to the WHO protocols and guidelines. Thus, the
MEC edge platform should incorporate the storage facilities for medical data. The patient registry, proposed as an MEH with a formidable

March/April 2021

capacity is linked with the entities of other two
use cases and with centralized global patient
health record (PHR) server. For diagnosis, both
patient vitals and testing results are required.
Therefore, an MEH is assigned for storing the
patient vitals via a telemetry service connected
to devices such as pulse oximeter, ventilator,
and smart medical beds. In similar manner,
records of medical tests conducted under each
patient are stored in another Mobile Edge Service (MES) where the data are aggregated from
the medical testing apparatus of CT, ultrasound,
X-ray, and PCR. Furthermore, an audio video
(AV) monitoring services is running on an MEH
while it is interfacing with the medical officials
through hand held devices. Under the AV monitoring MEH, each patient is monitored with an
ME App. The access to the PHR level is dependent on the designation of the health official.
The diagnosing MES can access all the health
records and registries hosted at different MEHs
and the global PHR database. Thus, once a
patient is been diagnosed and a treatment plan
is finalized, treatments are carried out in the
reconnaissance mode with AR bots explicated in
Use Case 1.

AR Assisted Remote Surgery With MEC
With AR, VR, and mixed reality technologies,
surgeons are given the ability to train and plan
all kinds of surgeries beforehand in a virtual
environment that emulate the pragmatic circumstances. Thus, use case three is inclusive of a
training and planning function launched as an
MEH and saves the surgical plan to a database;
where the surgical attendants can revisit the
strategies prior to the surgery. Furthermore, surgical trainees could use this module for training
various surgeries available in the AR surgical
training database. This function is implemented
as a typical AR streaming application in the MES.
However, access to the system should be controlled by an internal function. For each AR
assisted remote surgery, an MEH is launching
the required facilities. The content of the MEH
resembles the use case 1, except for the AR surgical controlling platform that links the surgical
bed and the remote AR console platform. In
order to improve the accuracy and perception of
the surgical environment, a Haptic feedback

IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - March/April 2021

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