Analysis of quality of service metrics and the security concerns in integrated cloud-fog environment for healthcare system

Abstract

With the improvement of IoT functions, number of devices connecting to Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to grow globally in future and those devices may have to generate a big bulk of data for processing in limited time. Under such environment, Data management should serve as a link between objects and data generating devices, as well as data consumer apps for analysis and action. IoT interacts with all communication devices and permits global access of data generated by devices. Cloud computing is playing a vital role in computing, network management and storing data but all these activities are being done in centralized data-centers. The centralized cloud computing can lead to some kind of risks like limited capacity issues, high latency and network failure, with the exponential growth of IoT. Cloud and fog computing has the answer for all such risks, as it does all computation or storage of IoT items locally instead of sending to cloud and thus this helps to provide quick results and improves Quality of service (QoS) for healthcare system. Cloud and fog is considered to be safest and quickest approach to ensure IoT delivers expected results in healthcare system where delay can lead to criticality for the patients. Fog computing becomes important as it manages data and computation at the network edge closest to the end user which makes it super & quick reactive. Despite its compelling advantages, the characteristics of fog computing arise new security and privacy challenges. This paper investigates the various QoS parameters and discusses different security issues along with possible solutions in fog system. The paper also proposes an approach to enhance the quality of service in integrated cloud-fog environment.