A Dynamic Tree-Based Fog Computing (DTBFC) Model for the Energy-Efficient IoT

Abstract

In order to decrease the energy consumption of the IoT (Internet of Things), the TBFC (Tree-based Fog Computing) model is proposed in our previous studies. Here, fog nodes are hierarchically structured where a root node shows a cluster of servers and a leaf node indicates an edge node which communicates with sensors and actuators. Each fog node supports a subsequence of subprocesses of an application process. As a volume of sensor data increases and decreases, some fog node gets overloaded and underloaded, respectively. In the DTBFC (Dynamic TBFC) model, the tree structure is dynamically changed by creating and dropping fog nodes so that the energy consumption of fog nodes can be reduced. A fog node is splitted, i.e. some of the subprocesses move to another fog node and is replicated, i.e. the subprocesses are supported by multiple fog nodes. We newly propose a DFC (Dynamic FC) algorithm to dynamically change the tree structure of the fog nodes to reduce the energy consumption and execution time of the fog nodes in a DTBFC model.