Abstract
Satellite Edge Computing (SEC) is seen as a promising solution for
deploying network functions in orbit to provide ubiquitous services with
low latency and bandwidth to support mission-critical applications.
Software Defined Networks (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization
(NFV) enable SEC to manage and deploy services more flexibly. In this
paper, we study a dynamic and topology-aware VNF mapping and scheduling
strategy in an SDN/NVF-enabled SEC infrastructure to maximize fairness
in terms of end-to-end service delay margins. We formulate the VNF
mapping and scheduling problem as an Integer Nonlinear Programming
problem (INLP) with the objective of minimax fairness among specified
service requests taking into account the time-varying satellite network
topology, traffic workload, and limited resources. We then propose the
following two algorithms to solve the INLP problem: Fairness-Aware
Greedy Algorithm for Dynamic VNF Mapping and Scheduling (FAGD_MASC) and
Fairness-Aware Simulated Annealing-Based Algorithm for Dynamic VNF
Mapping and Scheduling (FASD_MASC), which are suitable for low and high
service arrival rates, respectively. Finally, we evaluate the proposed
algorithms through extensive simulations. The results show that both
FAGD_MASC and FASD_MASC algorithms are very close to the
optimizationbased solution and outperform a benchmark solution in terms
of service acceptance rate and fairness.