Improving a procedure of load balancing in distributed IoT systems

Abstract

The object of this research is the process of load balancing in distributed Internet of Things (IoT) systems. Within this work, a complex of problems related to efficient load distribution has been addressed. The authors conducted an analysis of existing load-balancing approaches and their drawbacks and proposed an enhanced architecture for the MQTT broker. Additionally, methods and algorithms for load balancing were developed based on multi-criteria server monitoring. Furthermore, the authors created a mathematical model to assess the uniformity of load distribution in the system and introduced a corresponding metric – the load distribution coefficient. In order to evaluate the proposed load balancing methods, a series of experiments were conducted, including the simulation of a distributed IoT system with non-deterministic load. The main goal of these experiments was to assess the uniformity of MQTT load distribution by the broker. The results of the experiments confirmed the hypothesis of improved load distribution efficiency through multi-criteria monitoring-based balancing. The utilization of the proposed load-balancing methods allowed for a more efficient utilization of computational resources. It was found that when using the proposed methods, in the case of non-deterministic load in the IoT system, the load distribution coefficient on average exceeded the corresponding indicator of existing methods by 70 %. In addition, the value of this coefficient for the proposed methods remains virtually unchanged throughout the experiment, which is evidence of the stable operation of the system as a whole. The results obtained can be useful in the development of modern IoT systems.