Research on Edge Server Deployment Strategy in LEO Mega-Constellation

The integration of Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) and Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite networks holds the potential to offer ubiquitous computing services for ground users and has garnered significant attention recently. While there has been extensive research conducted in the field of Satellite Mobile Edge Computing (SMEC), research on edge server deployment in mega-constellation is overlooked. Edge servers require an appropriate quantification and placement before the implementation of computation offloading. The improper deployment strategy can result in high access latency and imbalance workload. In this paper, we propose a two-stage approach, called cluster-based small-scale server deployment (CSSD), for small-scale placing and dynamic allocating edge servers that enable low access latency and workload balancing. Specifically, the offline stage is employed to determine the optimal placement of edge servers and the initial offloading mapping from access satellites to service satellites. The online stage, building dynamically adjusts the offloading mapping based on the spatiotemporal positions and workload of the satellites to balance system workload. Evaluation results show that CSSD outperforms other approaches with up to 16.37% and 35.38% enhancements in terms of workload standard deviation and user service rate while maintaining low access latency.