A Survey on Mainstream Dimensions of Edge Computing

Abstract

Driven by the booming of Internet of Things and 4G/5G communications, an increasingly large number of edge devices, e.g., sensors and cell phones, are continuously producing data service requests, which should be processed in high quality. Recent years have seen a paradigm shift from centralized cloud computing toward edge computing. Edge computing is a distributed computing paradigm that utilizes computing and storage resources of edge devices. Compared with traditional cloud computing, edge computing migrates data computation and storage to the edge devices. Recently many technical breakthroughs have been made in edge computing. This survey reviews existing research on edge computing with a focus on the three mainstream dimensions: resource allocation, data fusion and security. We present specific techniques of the three dimensions and how they can contribute to the improvement of edge computing. Emerging and prospective application fields that would benefit from edge computing are also discussed.