Admission Control with Latency Considerations for 5G Mobile Edge Computing

The fifth generation (5G) mobile network is a new generation of broadband mobile communication technology with the potential to address the increasing demands of new user services and applications that have stringent low latency and high bandwidth requirements. Besides the enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) which is an evolution of broadband services from previous generations, the ultra reliable low latency communication (URLLC) service comes with stringent delay requirements that are needed to support new applications like autonomous vehicles, augmented/virtual reality, etc. Mobile or multiple access edge computing (MEC) emerged to provide services and computing resources for users at the network edge to provide faster access speeds and lower end-to-end delays. To better meet user needs and maximize resource utilization, network resources need to be allocated and managed efficiently. Admission control for user requests is one of the methods used that can effectively prevent network congestion, thereby improving the overall performance of the system. In this paper, we propose a RED-based Admission Control with Latency Considerations (REDAL) algorithm for user admission control that aims to increase throughput, meet users’ delay requirements and reduce packet discard rate. By explicitly accounting for user traffic delay constraints and bandwidth requirements, we are able to meet the strict delay constraints of URLLC traffic while meeting the bandwidth requirements of eMBB traffic. We validate our approach in an MEC scenario to demonstrate high resource utilization and also keeping the request discard rate below 20%.