Edge Intelligence

This graduate-level textbook is ideally suited for lecturing the most relevant topics of Edge Computing and its ties to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) approaches. It starts from basics and gradually advances, step-by-step, to ways AI/ML concepts can help or benefit from Edge Computing platforms. The book is structured into seven chapters; each comes with its own dedicated set of teaching materials (practical skills, demonstration videos, questions, lab assignments, etc.). Chapter 1 opens the book and comprehensively introduces the concept of distributed computing continuum systems that led to the creation of Edge Computing. Chapter 2 motivates the use of container technologies and how they are used to implement programmable edge computing platforms. Chapter 3 introduces ways to employ AI/ML approaches to optimize service lifecycles at the edge. Chapter 4 goes deeper in the use of AI/ML and introduces ways to optimize spreading computational tasks along edge computing platforms. Chapter 5 introduces AI/ML pipelines to efficiently process generated data on the edge. Chapter 6 introduces ways to implement AI/ML systems on the edge and ways to deal with their training and inferencing procedures considering the limited resources available at the edge-nodes. Chapter 7 motivates the creation of a new orchestrator independent object model to descriptive objects (nodes, applications, etc.) and requirements (SLAs) for underlying edge platforms. To provide hands-on experience to students and step-by-step improve their technical capabilities, seven sets of Tutorials-and-Labs (TaLs) are also designed. Codes and Instructions for each TaL is provided on the book website, and accompanied by videos to facilitate their learning process.

With the explosive growth of mobile computing and Internet of Things (IoT) applications, as exemplified by AR/VR, smart city, and video/audio surveillance, billions of mobile and IoT devices are being connected to the Internet, generating zillions of bytes of data at the network edge. Driven by this trend, there is an urgent need to push the frontiers of artificial intelligence (AI) to the network edge to fully unleash the potential of IoT big data. Indeed, the marriage of edge computing and AI has resulted in innovative solutions, namely edge intelligence or edge AI. Nevertheless, research and practice on this emerging inter-disciplinary field is still in its infancy stage. To facilitate the dissemination of the recent advances in edge intelligence in both academia and industry, this book conducts a comprehensive and detailed survey of the recent research efforts and also showcases the authors' own research progress on edge intelligence. Specifically, the book first reviews the background and present motivation for AI running at the network edge. Next, it provides an overview of the overarching architectures, frameworks, and emerging key technologies for deep learning models toward training/inference at the network edge. To illustrate the research problems for edge intelligence, the book also showcases four of the authors' own research projects on edge intelligence, ranging from rigorous theoretical analysis to studies based on realistic implementation. Finally, it discusses the applications, marketplace, and future research opportunities of edge intelligence. This emerging interdisciplinary field offers many open problems and yet also tremendous opportunities, and this book only touches the tip of iceberg. Hopefully, this book will elicit escalating attention, stimulate fruitful discussions, and open new directions on edge intelligence.

This book examines whether the integration of edge intelligence (EI) and blockchain (BC) can open up new horizons for providing ubiquitous intelligent services. Accordingly, the authors conduct a summarization of the recent research efforts on the existing works for EI and BC, further painting a comprehensive picture of the limitation of EI and why BC could benefit EI. To examine how to integrate EI and BC, the authors discuss the BC-driven EI and tailoring BC to EI, including an overview, motivations, and integrated frameworks. Finally, some challenges and future directions are explored. The book explores the technologies associated with the integrated system between EI and BC, and further bridges the gap between immature BC and EI-amicable BC. Explores the integration of edge intelligence (EI) and blockchain (BC), including their integrated motivations, frameworks and challenges; Presents how BC-driven EI can realize computing-power management, data administration, and model optimization; Describes how to tailor BC to better support EI, including flexible consensus protocol, effective incentive mechanism, intellectuality smart contract, and scalable BC system tailoring; Presents some key research challenges and future directions for the integrated system.

This book presents the technologies that empower edge intelligence, along with their use in novel IoT solutions. Specifically, it presents how 5G/6G, Edge AI, and Blockchain solutions enable novel IoT-based decentralized intelligence use cases at the edge of the cloud/edge/IoT continuum. Emphasis is placed on presenting how these technologies support a wide array of functional and non-functional requirements spanning latency, performance, cybersecurity, data protection, real-time performance, energy efficiency, and more. The various chapters of the book are contributed by several EU-funded projects, which have recently developed novel IoT platforms that enable the development and deployment of edge intelligence applications based on the cloud/edge paradigm. Each one of the projects employs its own approach and uses a different mix of networking, middleware, and IoT technologies. Therefore, each of the chapters of the book contributes a unique perspective on the capabilities of enabling technologies and their integration in practical real-life applications in different sectors. The book is structured in five distinct parts. Each one of the first four parts focuses on a specific set of enabling technologies for edge intelligence and smart IoT applications in the cloud/edge/IoT continuum. Furthermore, the fifth part provides information about complementary aspects of next-generation IoT technology, including information about business models and IoT skills. Specifically: The first part focuses on 5G/6G networking technologies and their roles in implementing edge intelligence applications. The second part presents IoT applications that employ machine learning and other forms of Artificial Intelligence at the edge of the network. The third part illustrates decentralized IoT applications based on distributed ledger technologies. The fourth part is devoted to the presentation of novel IoT applications and use cases spanning the cloud/edge/IoT continuum. The fifth part discusses complementary aspects of IoT technologies, including business models and digital skills.

This book discusses the future possibilities of AI with cloud computing and edge computing. The main goal of this book is to conduct analyses, implementation and discussion of many tools (of artificial intelligence, machine learning and deep learning and cloud computing, fog computing, and edge computing including concepts of cyber security) for understanding integration of these technologies. With this book, readers can quickly get an overview of these emerging topics and get many ideas of the future of AI with cloud, edge, and in many other areas. Topics include machine and deep learning techniques for Internet of Things based cloud systems; security, privacy and trust issues in AI based cloud and IoT based cloud systems; AI for smart data storage in cloud-based IoT; blockchain based solutions for AI based cloud and IoT based cloud systems.This book is relevent to researchers, academics, students, and professionals.

This book provides a comprehensive and systematic exploration of next-generation Edge Intelligence (EI) Networks. It delves deep into the critical design considerations within this context, emphasizing the necessity for functional and dependable interactions between networking strategies and the diverse application scenarios. This should help assist to encompass a wide range of environments. This book also discusses topics such as resource optimization, incentive mechanisms, channel prediction and cutting-edge technologies, which includes digital twins and advanced machine learning techniques. It underscores the importance of functional integration to facilitate meaningful collaborations between networks and systems, while operating across heterogeneous environments aiming support novel and disruptive human-oriented services and applications. Valuable insights into the stringent requirements for intelligence capabilities, communication latency and real-time response are discussed. This characterizes the new EI era, driving the creation of comprehensive cross-domain architectural ecosystems that infuse human-like intelligence into every aspect of emerging EI systems. This book primarily targets advanced-level students as well as postdoctoral researchers, who are new to this field and are searching for a comprehensive understanding of emerging EI systems. Practitioners seeking guidance in the development and implementation of EI systems in practical contexts will also benefit from this book.

As an important enabler for changing people’s lives, advances in artificial intelligence (AI)-based applications and services are on the rise, despite being hindered by efficiency and latency issues. By focusing on deep learning as the most representative technique of AI, this book provides a comprehensive overview of how AI services are being applied to the network edge near the data sources, and demonstrates how AI and edge computing can be mutually beneficial. To do so, it introduces and discusses: 1) edge intelligence and intelligent edge; and 2) their implementation methods and enabling technologies, namely AI training and inference in the customized edge computing framework. Gathering essential information previously scattered across the communication, networking, and AI areas, the book can help readers to understand the connections between key enabling technologies, e.g. a) AI applications in edge; b) AI inference in edge; c) AI training for edge; d) edge computing for AI; and e) using AI to optimize edge. After identifying these five aspects, which are essential for the fusion of edge computing and AI, it discusses current challenges and outlines future trends in achieving more pervasive and fine-grained intelligence with the aid of edge computing.

Mobile Edge Artificial Intelligence: Opportunities and Challenges presents recent advances in wireless technologies and nonconvex optimization techniques for designing efficient edge AI systems. The book includes comprehensive coverage on modeling, algorithm design and theoretical analysis. Through typical examples, the powerfulness of this set of systems and algorithms is demonstrated, along with their abilities to make low-latency, reliable and private intelligent decisions at network edge. With the availability of massive datasets, high performance computing platforms, sophisticated algorithms and software toolkits, AI has achieved remarkable success in many application domains. As such, intelligent wireless networks will be designed to leverage advanced wireless communications and mobile computing technologies to support AI-enabled applications at various edge mobile devices with limited communication, computation, hardware and energy resources. Presents advanced key enabling techniques, including model compression, wireless MapReduce and wireless cooperative transmission Provides advanced 6G wireless techniques, including over-the-air computation and reconfigurable intelligent surface Includes principles for designing communication-efficient edge inference systems, communication-efficient training systems, and communication-efficient optimization algorithms for edge machine learning