Multi-level Architecture for P2P Services in Mobile Networks

Latency is an important metric of mobile applications performance. To reduce the latency, recently it was proposed to replace the standard centralized architecture of mobile applications by the mobile edge computing (MEC). Such an approach allows processing of users data closer to their location. Motivated by disaster response scenarios, in this paper we investigated the capabilities of MEC for the forwarding of first aid request as an illustrative example of P2P service discovery in an emergency situation. We proposed an analytical model of the system and executed performance evaluation using system level simulator. Our results show that the developed solution considerably reduces the request processing time. The proposed solution can be used not only for first aid but also for general purposes, e.g., searching various service providers in a certain location.