A Model for Mobile Fog Computing in the IoT

Abstract

In the IoT (Internet of Things), millions of devices with sensors and actuators are interconnected with clouds of servers in networks. In order to reduce the traffic of networks and servers in the IoT, types of the fog computing (FC) models are proposed, which are composed of fog nodes which process data from devices and forward the processed data to servers. In most FC models, fog nodes are located in fixed locations and do not move in networks. In this paper, we newly propose a mobile FC (MFC) model where fog nodes communicate with other nodes in wireless networks while moving like vehicles. Here, each fog node processes input data received from other nodes and devices and sends output data obtained by processing the input data to other fog nodes in the opportunistic way. In the opportunistic protocols, only data is exchanged among nodes. We propose an MFC protocol where not only data but also subprocesses are exchanged among nodes so that the electric energy to be consumed by the nodes can be reduced.