MuHoW: Distributed protocol for resource sharing in collaborative edge-computing networks

Abstract

The incorporation of end devices in the edge-to-cloud continuum yields substantial benefits to conventional cloud computing frameworks, expediting communication between end devices and computational resources, and resulting in new use cases, particularly in the field of mobile networks. However, few related works leverage the full potential of resource sharing at the far edge, as most proposals require that end nodes rely on a higher-capacity computational node.This manuscript presents Multi-Hop Wireless Resource Sharing Protocol (MuHoW), a lightweight protocol tailored for multi-hop wireless networks. MuHoW enables resource sharing within collaborative edge-computing networks by facilitating the discovery of wireless neighbours and subsequently establishing a confluence tree directed towards the edge/fog infrastructure. This tree serves as a conduit for aggregating essential resource sharing information, ensuring the establishment of a seamless collaborative edge/fog environment. The empirical findings highlight the scalability of MuHoW, due to its linear control message growth with network size. Moreover, the efficiency of the protocol is very high even in lossy environments as evidenced by the fact that most resource sharing messages are successfully delivered as expected.