Achieving Low-Latency Mobile Edge Computing by Uplink and Downlink Decoupled Access in HetNets
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Despite the physical proximity of computationally-enhanced Base Stations (BSs) in Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) systems, achieving an end-to-end low-latency for computations offloading is still a critical design problem. This is because the offloading of computational tasks via the MEC or cloudlet servers entails the use of uplink and downlink radio links that are usually assumed to be coupled to a single BS. However, for heterogeneous networks, a new architectural paradigm whereby uplink and downlink are not associated with the same BS is proposed and seen to provide gains in network throughput. Motivated by such gains, and by using typical results from stochastic geometry, we formulate the offloading latency for the MEC-based scheme with decoupled UL/DL association, or decoupled access, and compare its performance to the conventional coupled or single association scheme. Despite the extra backhaul delay necessary for the communication between the two serving BSs in UL and DL, the MEC-based offloading scheme with decoupled association is still capable of providing a fairly lower offloading latency as compared to the conventional offloading scheme with coupled association.
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