The Fifth Generation (5G) of mobile networks offers new and advanced services with stricter requirements. Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) is a key technology that enables these new services by deploying multiple devices with computing and storage capabilities at the edge of the network, close to end-users. MEC enhances network efficiency by reducing latency, enabling real-time awareness of the local environment, allowing cloud offloading, and reducing traffic congestion. New mission-critical applications require high security and dependability, which are rarely addressed alongside performance. This survey paper fills this gap by presenting 5G MEC’s three aspects: security, dependability, and performance. The paper provides an overview of MEC, introduces taxonomy, state-of-the-art, and challenges related to each aspect. Finally, the paper presents the challenges of jointly addressing these three aspects.

Many wireless technologies used to build local or personal area networks (WLANs, WPANs) operate into the 2.4 GHz ISM band. Due to the mutual interference, the coexistence of such devices working at the same time in the same area can be troublesome. This paper reports the result of an extensive experimental study on the performance of three popular technologies (ZigBee, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth), under their mutual disturbance. In addition to assessing the effect of the interference between pairs of technologies, we also analyzed the simultaneous interference among the three systems, a scenario that has never been studied before. Our work partly confirms previous findings, but also reveals some unexpected behaviors, imposing to reconsider some assumptions about the supposed interference-free ZigBee and Bluetooth channels.

Mobile network operators are experiencing a tremendous increase in data traffic due to the growing popularity of bandwidth-intensive video services. This challenge can be faced either by boosting the capacity of the network infrastructure, or by means of offloading traffic from the backhaul and core network and serving contents from distributed cache servers close to the users. Network operators can extend the coverage of traditional CDNs by making usage of caching locations much closer to the users than traditional CDNs. Additionally, network operators can optimize the caching and delivery of contents by exploiting the complete knowledge of their network for designing a cost-effective infrastructure able to achieve both improved user satisfaction and cost savings. This article provides thoroughly justified design principles for a highly distributed operator-owned CDN while focusing on four key aspects: the optimal location of cache servers, mechanisms for request routing, content replica placement, and content outsourcing and retrieval.

The fifth generation (5G) of cellular networks promises to be a major step in the evolution of wireless technology. 5G is planned to be used in a very broad set of application scenarios. These scenarios have strict heterogeneous requirements that will be accomplished by enhancements on the radio access network and a collection of innovative wireless technologies. Softwarization technologies, such as Software‐Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV), will play a key role in integrating these different technologies. Network slicing emerges as a cost‐efficient solution for the implementation of the diverse 5G requirements and verticals. The 5G radio access and core networks will be based on a SDN/NFV infrastructure, which will be able to orchestrate the resources and control the network in order to efficiently and flexibly and with scalability provide network services. In this paper, we present the up‐to‐date status of the software‐defined 5G radio access and core networks and a broad range of future research challenges on the orchestration and control aspects.