openLEON is an open source muLti-access Edge cOmputiNg end-to-end emulator that operates from the edge data center to the mobile users. openLEON bridges the functionalities of existing emulators for data centers and mobile networks, i.e., Mininet and srsLTE, and makes it possible to evaluate and validate research ideas on all the components of an end-to-end mobile edge architecture.

1. Carlos Andrés, Claudio Fiandrino, Alejandro Blanco,
Pablo Jiménez, Norbert Ludant, Joerg Widmer
IMDEA Networks, Madrid, Spain
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2. • Standardized by ETSI
• Brings computing service closer to the end user
Figure from ETSI-MEC - Introduction to Mobile Edge Computing
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3. • NOT fog computing
Fog computing is a system-level horizontal architecture that distributes
resources and services of computing, storage, control and networking
anywhere along the continuum from Cloud to Things
 MEC: computing close to core and/or eNodeB
 Fog: computing close to edge devices (e.g., IoT)
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4. • Objectives
 Reduces latency
 Alleviates congestion in the core network
• Use cases:
 video analytics, augmented reality
 location services, Internet-of-Things (IoT)
 optimized local content distribution and data caching
• Not tied to 5G only
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5. • MEC systems run in edge data centers
• Need to capture dynamics of data centers and
mobile networks simulatenously
• Solution: openLEON, a new MEC emulator
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6. • High fidelity in mobile and datacenter
networks
• Easy to extend and flexible
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7. • Mininet (quoting http://mininet.org/)
creates a realistic virtual network, running real
kernel, switch and application code, on a single
machine (VM, cloud or native)
 Widely adopted emulator is SDN research
 Fast and simple prototyping
 Well known scalability issues (OK in MEC: few hosts)
 Fidelity behaviour emulated vs. real network
• Maxinet
 Overcomes scalability issues: emulation spans several
physical machines
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8. 8
• Support 3GPP Rel. 9, 10
• DL: 25 Mbps – UL: 18
Mbps @ 10 MHz
• Code: difficult
• Support 3GPP Rel. 8
• DL: 22 Mbps – UL: 13
Mbps @ 10 MHz
• Code: easy
srsLTE
Open source software implementations of LTE

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• Traffic UE -> edge data center routed via eNB
• Traffic edge data center -> UE routed via EPC host

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11. • Nuand BladeRF x40 / Motorola Moto G5 Plus ->
UE
• NI USRP-2942R -> eNB
• A desktop computer with 8 cores at 3.4 GHz
and 16 GB RAM -> eNB application + VM
• VM runs
 EPC applications (run_spgw, run_hss and run_mme)
 Mininet
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12. • Caching
• Impact of RLC Buffer Size
• Performace with Different Channel Quality
• Multipath-TCP
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13. • UE generates 120 echo requests with different packet sizes
• Remote data center (R) / local host (L) same rack (SR) different rack
(DR)
• MEC with local caching reduces RTT and prevents throughput
degradation
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14. • Varing the buffer size (in num. of PDUs)
• Queueing negatively affects RTT
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15. • Presence of background traffic
• Allocating application in the same Rack reduces RTT
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16. • UE1 with CQI 13-14
• UE2 with CQI 7-8
• Throughput-RTT 2-σ ellipse plot
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17. • Mininet hosts with multiple interfaces
• MEC provides significant advantage with plain MP-TCP
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18. • Mininet: 200 Mbps x 16 hosts
• srsLTE: max 5 UEs simutaneously,
stability ~ 1h @ 10 MHz
• Transport
• Multi-RAT
• Mobile Cloud Computing
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19. openLEON: open source muLti-access Edge
cOmputiNg emulator
 Enables end-to-end experimentation and prototyping
 Emulates both datacenter and mobile networks
 Builds on existing emulators srsLTE and Mininet
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Soon available at http://openleon.networks.imdea.org/

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claudio.fiandrino@imdea.org