Edge Intelligence in Mobile Nodes: Opportunistic Pipeline via 5G D2D for On-site Sensing.

Foreseeing several potential use cases, this paper proposes a node-level edge intelligence (EI) based mobile pipeline computing concept in a Device-to-Device (D2D) communication setup and studies the related issues, where D2D is likely based on millimeter-wave (mmWave) in the 5G mobile communication. Different from traditional distributed computing systems, the proposed opportunistic system employs a chain of wirelessly pipelined resource-limited node-level edge devices (NEDs) on the move to handle real-time computation-intensive multi-stage processing for which current cloud computing technology may not be suitable. The feasibility of such a mobile pipeline can be anticipated as high-speed and low-latency wireless technologies get mature. We present a system model by defining the architecture and basic functions and introducing a possible optimal pipeline finding procedure. As part of the feasibility assessment, the impact of mmWave blockage on the pipeline stability is analyzed and examined for both single-pipeline and concurrent-multiple-pipeline scenarios. Our design and analysis results provide specific insight to guide system design and lay a foundation for further work along this line.