Application Relocation Method for Distributed Cloud Environment Considering E2E Delay and Cost Variation.

Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) is attracting attention as a way of realizing the diverse services expected in 5G. Since resources of the MEC hosts are limited, optimal Application (App) allocation methods for the Distributed Cloud Environment (DCE) consisting of the MEC hosts and Central Cloud hosts are being actively studied. This paper proposes an App relocation method for the Common Service Infrastructure, which manages diverse Apps across service providers, to enhance the User Equipment accommodation efficiency of the DCE. The proposed method achieves a high success rate and efficient App relocation by selecting a combination of the relocated App and destination host while simultaneously considering the E2E delay variation of each App affected by App relocation and the cost associated with App relocation. Numerical simulations show that the proposed method reduces the number of initial App allocation failures by up to 73.6% compared to the existing method.