User Equipment Context Caching for Edge Computing Handover
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Solution Overview
Problem
In wireless networks, when a user equipment (UE) moves from one Multi-Access/Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) device to another, the target MEC often lacks access to the context information necessary for seamless stateful services, leading to potential service interruptions.
Innovation Solution
The UE caches context information from the source MEC and transfers it to the target MEC with elevated priority, ensuring minimal disruption by providing the cached information to the target MEC, which resumes services without latency issues.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If the UE transfers context information from source MEC to target MEC using standard priority, then the transfer process is simple, but service interruption and latency occur during MEC handover
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary action by having the UE cache context information from the source MEC before the actual handover occurs. This pre-caching ensures that when the UE moves to the target MEC's coverage area, the context data is already available in the UE's buffer, enabling immediate service resumption without waiting for transfer during handover, thus eliminating service interruption and latency issues.
2Reliability
If the UE caches and transfers context information with elevated priority, then service continuity is maintained, but network resources are consumed for high-priority data transfer
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary action by having the UE cache context information from the source MEC before the actual handover occurs. This pre-caching ensures that when the UE moves to the target MEC's coverage area, the context data is already available in the UE's buffer, enabling immediate service resumption without waiting for transfer during handover, thus eliminating service interruption and latency issues.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent applies parameter changes by dynamically adjusting the priority level of context information transfer based on handover conditions. During active handover processes, the context data is marked with elevated priority to ensure rapid transmission and minimize service disruption. This selective priority assignment optimizes network resource usage by allocating higher resources only when necessary for maintaining service continuity, rather than always using high priority.
3Device complexity
If the target MEC requests context information after UE arrival, then the transfer process is simple, but service latency increases due to post-arrival data retrieval
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary action by having the UE cache context information from the source MEC before the actual handover occurs. This pre-caching ensures that when the UE moves to the target MEC's coverage area, the context data is already available in the UE's buffer, enabling immediate service resumption without waiting for transfer during handover, thus eliminating service interruption and latency issues.
Data Source
AI summary
A system described herein may provide a technique for the seamless transfer of services provided by a first Multi-Access/Mobile Edge Computing device (“MEC”) to a User Equipment (“UE”), to a second MEC. Context information associated with a given application for which services are provided by the first MEC may be cached by the UE based on a determination that the second MEC should provide the services, and the UE may provide the cached information to the second MEC in order to seamlessly continue receiving services. The providing of the cached information to the UE and/or to the second MEC may be performed with an elevated priority level, in order to facilitate the seamless providing of the services relating to the application, thus resulting in minimal to no interruption of the user experience associated with the application.