Mobile-Edge Computing Come Home! Connecting things in future smart homes using LTE device-to-device communications

Future 4G/5G networks are expected to play a major role in supporting the future Internet of Things (IoT), due to their widespread, ubiquitous coverage, plug-and-play configuration and embedded security. Besides connectivity, however, future IoT will need computation and storage in proximity of sensors and actuators to support time-critical and opportunistic applications. To this aim, the introduction of Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) is currently under standardization as a novel paradigm to enable deployment of applications straight into the network. In this work we analyze solutions to bring MEC computation and storage as close as possible to end users and smart objects. First, a smart-home system is designed as a reference smallscale IoT system to derive network requirements; then alternative network configurations to support such requirements are analyzed to highlight their pros and cons. In particular, we show how LTE Device-to-Device (D2D) operation mode can be exploited to guarantee proximity communication with reduced costs. Finally, the expected benefits for operators are assessed via simulation.