Bridging Digital Divide for Participants of Videoconferencing Sessions with Unequal Access to Mobile Internet: A MEC-Based Approach

Abstract

In spite of the unprecedented opportunities carried out by the 5G standard to bridge the technological digital divide in developing countries, we are increasingly witnessing the coexistence of <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$4 \mathrm{G}, 3 \mathrm{G}$</tex>, and 2 G with different territorial coverage rates, which accentuates this divide within the same country. In this paper, we look at how to upgrade the performance of a 4G network to that of 5G, and how to further optimize 5G itself to move towards Beyond 5G. The goal is to enable a more comfortable use of the videoconferencing application in scenarios where some participants use 5G while others only have access to 4G. We build on 5G Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC)enabling technology to design an architecture where distributed videoconferencing servers are hosted within MEC and in close proximity to users' equipment. Simulations run using the Simu5G simulator show an end-to-end delay performance gain over remote cloud-based architectures.