Design, Implementation and Evaluation of Core/Periphery-based Network-oriented Mixed Reality Services

Abstract

Many new network-oriented services have been developed in recent years, and Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) has been standardized to improve the responsiveness of services. When deploying services in a MEC environment, it is necessary to consider a service structure that can flexibly switch service behaviors to meet various user requests and that can change service behaviors according to the real-world environment at a low implementation cost. In this paper, we introduce a core/periphery structure for service components, which is known as a model for flexible behavior in biological systems, and design and implement a network-oriented mixed reality service based on this structure. We investigate what kinds of functions should be developed to accommodate user requests in conjunction with various types of devices and real-world environments in which users and devices are located. To utilize the flexibility of a core/periphery structure, we regard core functions as those whose behaviors remain unchanged even when there are changes in user requests or the environment. In contrast, peripheral functions are those whose behaviors can change under such circumstances. Experiments reveal that implementation costs are reduced while retaining increases in service response time to less than 31 ms. These results show that taking advantage of a core/periphery structure allows appropriate division of service functions and placement of functions in a MEC environment, with only small penalties on latency and at a low implementation cost.

Evolvable Design of Network-oriented Services based on Core/Periphery Structure

“…Our previous works [12][13][14] have shown that network-oriented services designed based on a core/periphery structure can adapt to environmental changes with low development cost by reusing the core and recreating only the periphery. We numerically investigated the advantages of the core/periphery structure for accommodating information services, represented by chains of functions 12 .…”

“…We numerically investigated the advantages of the core/periphery structure for accommodating information services, represented by chains of functions 12 . In addition, we focused on a shopping experience service using mixed reality (MR) and robots as a use case for realizing a service scenario based on 12 , and we implemented the service with an actual device and demonstrated that service design using a core/periphery structure is effective for robot operation when the numbers of types of devices on the user side and remote side increase 13,15 .…”

Evolvable design of network-oriented services based on a core/periphery structure

“…We numerically investigated the advantages of the core/periphery structure for accommodating information services, represented by chains of functions 11 . In addition, we focused on a shopping experience service using mixed reality and robots as a use case for realizing a service scenario based on 11 , and we implemented the service with an actual device and demonstrated that service design using a core/periphery structure is effective for robot operation when the number of device types on the user side and remote side increases 12 , 14 .…”