An Air-Ground Integration Approach for Mobile Edge Computing in IoT

Mobile edge computing (MEC), which enables delay-sensitive computing tasks to be executed at network edges, has been proposed to accommodate the explosive growth of the Internet of Things. However, the growing demands for massive connectivity, ultra-low latency, and high reliability in various emerging resource-hungry and computation-intensive applications pose new challenges in network access capacity. This motivates us to conceive a new MEC framework from an air-ground integration perspective. First, we present a review of the state-of-the-art literature. Then the architecture and technological benefits of the proposed framework are elaborated. Next, four typical use cases are introduced, and a case study is conducted to demonstrate the significant performance improvements in computation capability and communication connectivity based on real-world road topology. Finally, we present challenges and research directions, and conclude this article.