FAST: Flexible and Low-Latency State Transfer in Mobile Edge Computing

It is vital for Tactile Internet to constantly maintain a low-latency control loop between sensors, actuators, and their controlling software applications. Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) is an essential technology that brings the elasticity of cloud computing to run controlling applications at a close proximity to controlled objects, thus reducing latency. To support the mobility of the objects, the underlying network has to be capable of migrating MEC applications seamlessly to guarantee the close proximity. However, it is challenging to migrate application states quickly and flexibly without interrupting the control loop. We propose FAST, a flexible scheme for direct and low-latency state transfer leveraging Software-Defined Networking (SDN). Evaluation results show that compared to state of the art, FAST reduces the service migration time by 80%.