Fig. 4: The comparative performance of the three architectures is illustrated in this figure across latency, autonomy–coordination evolution, and cost.

In a), the end-to-end latency distributions under moderate (blue) and heavy (orange) load conditions are shown. In b), the temporal evolution of autonomy and coordination is presented, where dotted blue and dashed green lines represent the layer-ecosystem architecture, dotted grey lines represent the non-adaptive edge architecture, and the black line denotes the traditional network architecture. In c), the normalized cost components, including deployment, edge computation, signaling overhead, and terminal energy, are compared using blue (traditional network), cyan (non-adaptive edge), and red (layer-ecosystem) bars.