Blockchain-Based Service Migration for Multi-Access Edge Computing

Abstract

Multi-access edge computing (MEC) extends cloud computing capabilities to the edge of the network which enables real-time and low-latency services for mobile users. To ensure that the delay requirement of the services is met even in the event of user mobility, service migration across different edge clusters is needed. Trusted migration and proper destination node selection across domains are two key ingredients for cross-edge migration. To this end, we propose a blockchain-based service migration framework to establish trust among different edge clusters. We use Kubernetes as our cluster orchestrator platform for containerized services. In addition, we model the problem as a Markov Decision Process (MDP) and employ the asynchronous advantage actor-critic (A3C) algorithm to select suitable destinations. The proposed approach is corroborated by a simulation study.