  Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) is an emerging paradigm that provides computing,
storage, and networking resources within the edge of the mobile Radio Access
Network (RAN). MEC servers are deployed on generic computing platform within
the RAN and allow for delay-sensitive and context-aware applications to be
executed in close proximity to the end users. This approach alleviates the
backhaul and core network and is crucial for enabling low-latency,
high-bandwidth, and agile mobile services. This article envisages a real-time,
context-aware collaboration framework that lies at the edge of the RAN,
constituted of MEC servers and mobile devices, and that amalgamates the
heterogeneous resources at the edge. Specifically, we introduce and study three
strong use cases ranging from mobile-edge orchestration, collaborative caching
and processing and multi-layer interference cancellation. We demonstrate the
promising benefits of these approaches in facilitating the evolution to 5G
networks. Finally, we discuss the key technical challenges and open-research
issues that need to be addressed in order to make an efficient integration of
MEC into 5G ecosystem.
