A Survey on Mobility of Edge Computing Networks in IoT: State-of-the-Art, Architectures, and Challenges

Edge computing leverages computing resources closer to the end-users at the edge of the network, rather than distant cloud servers in the centralized IoT architecture. Edge computing nodes (ECNs), experience less transmission latency and usually save on energy while network overheads are mitigated. The ECNs can be fixed or mobile in their positions. We will focus on mobile ECNs in this survey. This paper presents a comprehensive survey on mobile ECNs and identifies some open research questions. In particular, mobile ECNs are classified into four categories, namely aerial, ground vehicular, spatial, and maritime nodes. For each specific group, any mutual basic terms used in the state-of-the-art are described, different types of nodes employed in the group are reviewed, the general network architecture is introduced, the existing methods and algorithms are studied, and the challenges that the group is scrimmaging against are explored. Moreover, the integrated architectures are surveyed, wherein two different categories of the aforementioned nodes jointly play the role of ECNs in the network. Finally, the research gaps, that are yet to be filled in the area of mobile ECNs, are discussed along with directions for future research and investigation in this promising area.