Energy-Sustainable Fog System for Mobile Web Services in Infrastructure-Less Environments

Qiushi Zheng,Tiehua Zhang,Jianhua Li,Yong Xiang,Jiong Jin,Longxiang Gao

doi:10.1109/access.2019.2951162

Qiushi Zheng, Tiehua Zhang + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1109/access.2019.2951162

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Abstract

Nowadays, critical information services such as emergency management and in-situation navigation rely heavily on the assumption of a reliable networking infrastructure and stable cloud processing, which is ineffective in infrastructure-less environments where disrupted or even no telecommunication connectivity is the norm. On the other hand, fog computing is an extension of cloud computing that is at the physical proximity of end-users to enable local storage, computing, and various forms of communication between devices and users. To this end, we design a fog system spanning hardware, software and networking, thus meeting the requirements of various stakeholders in difficult surroundings. As a complement to a cloud-centred solution, this system is geo-distributed, self-powered, self-managed, location-aware, highly efficient and able to provide situational information services without Internet connectivity. The proposed system has been implemented in national parklands of Australia to achieve a personalized information service, emergency management and in-park navigation for all types of parkland users.

Highlights

Information services have become indispensable with the rapid developments in information and communication technology (ICT) [1]
Following the virtual fog framework demonstration in [7], we investigate an energy-sustainable fog system that consists of distributed collaborative fog nodes and photovoltaic systems, building a green, stable, service-rich and high-performance network for information services in remote rural attractions
The input voltage is reduced by a buck circuit to 5V and output through a USB port to Raspberry Pi 3B, simultaneously, and the input voltage is increased by a boost circuit to 24V and output by Power over Ethernet (PoE) to a Nanobeam with an RJ45 socket

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Information services have become indispensable with the rapid developments in information and communication technology (ICT) [1]. One serious issue faced by park managers is that daily maintenance and operations rely heavily on workers, who cannot guarantee good performance in environment monitoring and tourist guiding Under this condition, the existing problem will be solved by interconnected nodes that are capable of communicating with environmental sensors (e.g., temperature, humidity, smoke sensors) to monitor changes in the outdoor climate and obtaining critical information in a timely manner to protect tourists’ safety. In order to overcome the two special challenges (unreliable cellular network and no electrical grid) brought by the infrastructure-less environment, fog computing and renewable power system are introduced to develop an energy-sustainable fog system to benefit the information services provisioning process in national parks. The contributions of this paper include: 1) We propose a novel hierarchical platform based on the traditional fog structure to reduce the usage of cloud computing by a local network system with distributed fog nodes for providing information services in infrastructure-less environments.

RELATED WORK

SOFTWARE DESIGN

RENEWABLE POWER SYSTEM

THE EXPERIMENTAL DEPLOYMENT

Findings

CONCLUSION