Warping the Edge: Where Instant Mobility in 5G Meets Stateful Applications

TL;DR

EdgeWarp tackles the challenge of maintaining ultra-low latency for mobility of stateful edge apps in 5G by introducing a cross-layer design that proactively migrates application state. It combines a multi-step target BS prediction pipeline based on an 8-layer LSTM, an extended edge data store enabling two-step state synchronization, and an app-aware control plane to prioritize latency-sensitive sessions. Real-world evaluations with CarMap and EMP show up to 15.4x reductions in app downtime and up to 3 orders of magnitude faster handovers for latency-sensitive sessions, with 97% target BS prediction accuracy 100 ms ahead. The work demonstrates significant practical impact by reducing mobility-induced downtime and guiding future 5G edge architectures toward app-aware, proactive mobility management.

Abstract

Edge computing is considered a key paradigm for supporting real-time applications over 5G networks, as hosting applications at the network edge can substantially reduce delays. A significant fraction of real-time applications over 5G are expected to be highly mobile applications. However, one challenge with hosting mobile applications on the network edge is ensuring that users continue to get low latency as they move across different locations. This requires the support to handover clients to different edge sites with negligible application delays. However, many edge applications are stateful and can experience significant downtime during state migration over 5G. This paper addresses the problem of enabling stateful mobile edge applications in 5G networks. We first identify the key architectural issues and then propose a new system design, EdgeWarp, that mitigates delays during mobility through proactive application state migration. To enable this, we extend the existing edge data stores with the design of a novel two-step application state synchronization protocol, that leverages the early prediction of the target edge host. Additionally, EdgeWarp prioritizes the handover of latency-sensitive edge applications by communicating their latency requirements to the 5G control plane at the beginning of a data session. Our evaluation with real edge applications shows up to a 15.4x reduction in application downtime under mobility. We have made our anonymized code publicly accessible here.

Figures (19)

• Figure 1: Key challenges and potential solutions to minimize downtime during application handover caused by mobility. Typical 5G handover delays are in the order of 100 to 200 ms understanding_operational_5g, while application session migration delays exceed 140 ms with existing methods (§\ref{['sec:slow_state_migration']}).
• Figure 2: Simplified 5G network architecture.
• Figure 3: App downtime experienced by latency-sensitive edge apps during mobility. Details §\ref{['sec:appendeix_implementatioin']}.
• Figure 4: Handover completion time comparison when apps are served by different 5G cores.
• Figure 5: EdgeWarp's system architecture.