IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - October 2016 - 88

In other words, MEC will be able to
provide in advance new IoT services
that would not be technically or
economically feasible before the
launch of 5G-like networks.
The VIM is responsible for managing the virtualized
resources for the ME applications. The management tasks
consist of allocating and releasing virtualized computing,
storage, and network resources provided by the virtualization infrastructure. The VIM also prepares the virtualization
infrastructure to run software images, and the software
images can be also stored by the VIM for a faster application
instantiation procedure. As virtualized resources may also
run out of capacity or fail in operation, it is important to
monitor them. The VIM provides support for fault and performance monitoring by collecting and reporting information on virtualized resources and providing the information
further to server and system level management entities. The
VIM has a reference point toward the virtualization infrastructure to manage the virtualized resources. The reference
point between the MEO and VIM is used for management of
the application images and the virtualized resources as well
as for monitoring the availability of the resources. The reference point between the MEPM and VIM is used to manage
the virtualized resources for the ME applications during
their lifecycle.

kEy usE casEs For MEc and iot
As anticipated, the MEC ecosystem is likely to bring significant benefit to the mobile operator (e.g., introducing QoE
platforms and agile service provisioning) and third parties/
OTT (for new business opportunities) but also to the common consumer that, at the end, will be able to experience
services that need to rely on very accurate localization or
high performance in terms of latency and available throughput. In other words, MEC will be able to provide in advance
new IoT services that would not be technically or economically feasible before the launch of 5G-like networks (possibly playing the role of a vanguard player for the exploration
of tomorrow's services).
Several uses are addressed by MEC and also currently
considered in next-generation mobile networks and 3GPP
[5] toward 5G networks. The following section describes a
selection of uses identified by ETSI MEC ISG [6], and relevant for IoT scenarios.

usE CasE: sECurity, saFEty, Data analytiCs
Security and safety have become two of the most important
verticals for IoT. The developments in technology with an
ever-increasing amount of data from sensors and high-resolution video cameras create the need for a scalable, flexible, and
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OCTOBER 2016

cost-economic solution to analyze the content in real time.
MEC can host the analytics applications close to the source
and allow for increased reliability, better performance, and
significant savings by processing huge amounts of data
locally. Enhanced video analytics enables creating and using
rules for different events to trigger alerts and forwarding
actions. Real-time video analysis can be used to identify and
classify objects (person, specific object), create rules for
observation areas of interest, define and use event-based
rules (entering/exiting area, leaving/removing object, loitering), and counting objects (number of people, objects). The
analytics can be further enhanced by sound analytics and
additional information from external sources and sensors.
MEC enables an automated, flexible, scalable, and cost-efficient solution for security. Analytics function can provide
flexible extensions to third parties through plug-in integration. The solution is flexible to deploy by enabling the video
processing and analytics application running at an optimum
location based on technical and business parameters.

usE CasE: VEhiClE-to-inFrastruCturE
CoMMuniCation
Digitalization of the services is progressing with enormous
speed, and the automotive sector is one area where the new
technologies are shaping the whole industry. Self-driving
cars have been already demonstrated by both traditional
automotive and new Internet players, and it is anticipated to
have the first autonomous cars commercially available by
2020. The work on a future 5G system is currently being
conducted by various organizations globally, and the digitalization in the automotive industry is clearly reflected in the
uses and the requirements. The IoT is a key driver for the
next-generation technology, and most of the uses appear to
focus on connected cars.
Connected cars are not only about self-driving capability; many other uses exist. More generally, all cases related
to smart transportation are of course in strict relation to the
already mentioned IoT paradigm. These cases are not only
considered from a theoretical point, of view, but also early
experimental activities are already currently taking place.
One example is road safety service, where traffic alerts can
be used by both human drivers and autonomous cars. A traffic alert service has been demonstrated in Germany at Digital
A9 Motorway test bed (https://www.telekom.com/media/
company/293064), where the live long-term evolution (LTE)
network from Deutsche Telekom was used to carry alert messages between vehicles in the same area. The exercise was
enabled by an MEC solution to achieve below 20-ms latencies vehicle-to-vehicle via the cellular infrastructure.
With the next-generation system, the latency requirements are set to the 1-ms range to allow for a wide range of
use cases. MEC is the ideal solution and has been identified
as a key component to support these ultralow latency scenarios as it enables hosting applications close to the users at the
edge cloud and therefore provides the shortest path between
the applications.

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - October 2016