Mobile Edge Computing-Enabled Blockchain Framework-A Survey

Mobile edge computing (MEC) enables cloud-based services to extend to edge networks consisting of mobile base systems. MEC provides software and hardware platforms to incorporate seamless and decentralized data management schemes adjacent to base systems, thus reducing the end-to-end latency of the user. It is an integral component of the fifth-generation (5G) architecture and operates by providing innovative IT-based services. MEC spans across multiple authoritative domains where trust and interoperability among nodes is a prime concern between low power-enabled sensor nodes, as in the case of Internet of things (IoT)-based environments. The requirements of trust and interoperability make a blockchain framework applicable to MEC platform. In such platforms, miners can solve computationally expensive proof-of-work (PoW) puzzles containing mobile transactions as blocks added to immutable ledger so that a substantial amount of CPU computations and energy constraints are consumed. This article presents a systematic survey of MEC architecture and introduces a mobile blockchain framework that can be incorporated with the MEC architecture to facilitate the mining scheme. Then, the article analyzes the effects of integration of blockchain with MEC platform. Finally, concluding remarks and future work are provided.