Low-latency edge processing for connected vehicles
A telecom provider needed sub-10ms processing for vehicle-to-infrastructure communication. Cloud round-trips exceeded latency budgets. We designed an edge compute layer that kept critical decisions local.
Context
Connected vehicle infrastructure required real-time event processing where delays could impact safety-critical decisions.
Constraint
Critical paths could not exceed 8ms latency, and the system had to degrade gracefully under saturation rather than cascading into back-pressure.
Intervention
Implemented an edge compute layer for time-critical decisions, with cloud sync for analytics. Event streaming decoupled ingestion from processing. Added explicit degradation modes and redundancy on critical paths.
Key decisions
- Edge-first processing for tight latency budgets
- Event streaming for ingestion/processing decoupling
- Low-latency state access with Redis
- Redundancy on critical paths
- Graceful degradation under overload
- Real-time latency monitoring
Outcomes
Latency-sensitive paths consistently held under 8ms. System degraded predictably under 150% load without data loss.
Why it matters
Predictable latency enables hard real-time guarantees—essential for safety-critical vehicle communication.
Implementation
Practical technology choices that matched the constraints.
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