With the advancement of Internet-of-Things (IoT) technology, various domains, such as smart factories and smart cars have used this new technology to provide value-added services. In addition, technologies, such as multiaccess edge computing (MEC) and network slicing provide another opportunity for the IoT to support more advanced and real-time services that could not have been previously supported. However, the simple integration of such technologies into the IoT does not take the full advantage of MEC and network slicing or the reduction of latency and traffic prioritization, respectively. Therefore, there is a strong need for an efficient integration mechanism for IoT platforms to maximize the benefit of using such technologies. In this article, we introduce a novel architectural framework that enables the virtualization of an IoT platform with minimum functions to support specific IoT services and host the instance in an edge node, close to the end user. As the instance provides its service at the edge node, where the MEC node and network slice are located, the traffic for the end user does not need to traverse back to the cloud. This architecture guarantees not only low latency but also efficient management of IoT services at the edge node. To show the feasibility of the proposed architecture, we conducted an experimental evaluation by comparing the transmission time of both IoT services running on the central cloud and those using sliced IoT functions in the edge gateway. The results show that the proposed architecture provides twice as much transmission speed as that from the conventional cloud-based IoT platform.

The term “Internet of Underwater Things (IoUT)” refers to a network of intelligent interconnected underwater devices designed to monitor various underwater activities. The IoUT allows for a network of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) to communicate with each other, sense their surroundings, collect data, and transmit them to control centers on the surface at typical Internet speeds. These data serve as a valuable resource for various tasks, including conducting crash surveys, discovering shipwrecks, detecting early signs of tsunamis, monitoring animal health, obtaining real-time aquatic information, and conducting archaeological expeditions. This paper introduces an additional set of alternative simulation tools for underwater networks. We categorize these tools into open-source and licensed simulator options and recommend that students consider using open-source simulators for monitoring underwater networks. There has not been widespread deployment or extensive research on underwater 5G-based networks. However, simulation tools provide some general insights into the challenges and potential issues associated with evaluating such networks, based on the characteristics of underwater communication and 5G, by surveying 5G-based underwater networks and 5G key aspects addressed by the research community in underwater network systems. Through an extensive review of the literature, we discuss the architecture of both Internet of Underwater application-assisted AUVs and Internet of Underwater Things communications in the 5G-based system.

Vehicular networks aim to support cooperative warning applications which involve dissemination of warning messages to reach vehicles in a target area. Due to the high mobility of vehicles, imperative technologies such as Software Defined Network (SDN) and Edge Computing (EC) have been proposed for next generation vehicular network. The SDN separates control plane from data plane entities and executes the control plane software on general purpose hardware. On the other hand, EC aims to reduce the network latency and packet loss rate by pushing the computations to the edge of the network. Nevertheless, the current solutions that integrate SDN and MEC could not satisfy the latency requirements for data dissemination of Vehicle-to-everything (V2X) services. To bridge the gap between the two technologies, the conventional EC was enhanced to multi-access edge computing (MEC) by collocating the edge computing servers with the radio access networks. In order to improve the latency for V2X services, we propose in this paper, a SDN-based multi-access edge computing framework for vehicular network (SDMEV). In the proposed solution, two main algorithms are implemented. First, a fuzzy logic-based algorithm is used to select the head vehicle for each eNBs collocated with RSU (eNBRSU) for the purpose of grouping vehicles based on their communication interfaces. Afterwards, an OpenFlow algorithm is deployed to update flow tables of forwarding devices at forwarding layers. In addition, a case study is presented and evaluated using Omnet++ network simulator which includes the INET-based SDN. Simulation results depict that the data dissemination based-SDN supported by multi-access edge computing over SDMEV can improve the latency requirements for V2X services.

There is a strong devotion in the automotive industry to be part of a wider progression towards the Fifth Generation (5G) era. In-vehicle integration costs between cellular and vehicle-to-vehicle networks using Dedicated Short Range Communication could be avoided by adopting Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything (C-V2X) technology with the possibility to re-use the existing mobile network infrastructure. More and more, with the emergence of Software Defined Networks, the flexibility and the programmability of the network have not only impacted the design of new vehicular network architectures but also the implementation of V2X services in future intelligent transportation systems. In this paper, we define the concepts that help evaluate software-defined-based vehicular network systems in the literature based on their modeling and implementation schemes. We first overview the current studies available in the literature on C-V2X technology in support of V2X applications. We then present the different architectures and their underlying system models for LTE-V2X communications. We later describe the key ideas of software-defined networks and their concepts for V2X services. Lastly, we provide a comparative analysis of existing SDN-based vehicular network system grouped according to their modeling and simulation concepts. We provide a discussion and highlight vehicular ad-hoc networks’ challenges handled by SDN-based vehicular networks.

Edge intelligence (EI) refers to a set of connected systems and devices for artificial intelligence (AI) data collected and learned near the data collection site. The EI model inference phase has been improved through edge caching technologies such as intelligent models (IMs). IM inference across heterogeneously distributed edge nodes is worthy of discussion. The present focuses on software-defined infrastructure (SDI) and introduces a containerized EI framework for a mobile wearable Internet-of-Things (IoT) system. This framework, called the containerized edge intelligence framework (CEIF), is an inter-working architecture that allows the provisioning of containerized EI processing intelligent services related to mobile wearable IoT systems. CEIF enables dynamic instantiation of the inference services of AI models that have been pre-trained on clouds. It also accommodates edge computing devices (ECDs) running the container virtualization technique. Dynamic AI learning policies can also help with workload optimization, thereby reducing the response time of the requests of the EI inference. To stall the rapid increase in user workload when inferring the collected data for analysis, we then propose a deep q-learning algorithm in which the container cluster platform learns the varying user workload at the location of each ECD. The requests of the EI inference are scaled with the learned value and are processed successfully without overloading the ECD. When evaluated in a case study, the proposed algorithm enabled scaling of the processing requests of the EI inference in a containerized EI system while minimizing the number of instantiated container EI instances. The EI inference's requests are completed in an under-loaded container EI cluster system.

With the advancement of the Internet of Things (IoT), different use cases, such as smart factories, smart cities, and smart cars are being developed. Technologies, such as multiaccess edge computing (MEC) and network slicing are being researched to support various vertical use cases. However, simply utilizing network slicing and MEC is insufficient when providing a specific IoT service. Accordingly, there is a need for a method of arranging and operating common service functions (CSFs) used in the IoT platform at the edge of the network. In addition, it is necessary not only to deliver virtual CSFs but also to implement autoscaling policies of these virtual common service resources. This study extends the idea of resource slicing technologies for the IoT service layer. The IoT service layer exposes the virtual IoT CSFs as an IoT slice service to be provided in the form of virtual network functions (VNFs) with MEC applications on top of the network function virtualization infrastructure (NFVI) at the edge of the network. We propose a framework architecture for virtual IoT slice service orchestration, and illustrate how to instantiate the virtual IoT service functions in the existing centralized cloud to the MEC platform. We also propose an elastic computing algorithm of virtual IoT slice services functions(vIoT-SSFs) resources at the NFVI so that the IoT applications and underlying IoT resources can access vIoT-SSFs at the edge of the network.