Fog Devices Research Articles

EdgeSyn: Privacy-preserving Data Publishing on Edge Network over Infinite Multimedia Data Stream

To privately publish sensitive multimedia data in an edge network with fog devices, one of the best privacy-preserving solutions is to use differential privacy (DP) mechanisms. However, existing DP data publication mechanisms for the infinite data stream of edge networks mainly focus on publishing data with specific types of data or a set of predetermined queries. This approach is not suitable for multimedia data with numerous features that require a more flexible data publishing mechanism. In this paper, we propose EdgeSyn, a novel mechanism for accurately publishing multimedia data over infinite data streams in an edge network. It allocates privacy budgets with a sliding window, adopting data synthesis mechanisms to support dynamic publishing without loss of accuracy. In more detail, EdgeSyn addresses the limitations associated with data types in prior data stream publishing approaches and introduces a privacy budget management strategy that optimally allocates budgets for the implementation of data synthesis mechanisms over an infinite data stream. The experimental results show that EdgeSyn performs well under different privacy budgets and various lengths of active windows.

A many-to-many matching with externalities solution for parallel task offloading in IoT networks

The efficient and timely execution of tasks is a fundamental challenge in the realm of future Internet of Things (IoT) networks. To address this challenge, fog devices are often deployed close to end devices to facilitate task processing on behalf of IoT nodes. One strategy for improving task computational delay is to employ parallel task offloading, in which tasks are subdivided into subtasks and sent to different fog devices for execution in parallel. However, allocating computational resources to fog nodes and mapping these resources to IoT subtasks is a key challenge in this area. This work models the parallel task offloading problem as a graph-matching problem and utilizes a many-to-many matching technique to achieve a stable mapping of IoT subtasks to fog node resources. Unfortunately, the proposed solution is subject to the problem of externalities due to the dynamic preference profiling of fog nodes. To address this issue, we employ an iterative algorithm to resolve any blocking pairs that may arise. Our results demonstrate that the proposed technique reduces the task latency by 29% as compared to other matching-based techniques available in the literature.

Multi-Agent Dynamic Fog Service Placement Approach

Fog computing as a paradigm was offered more than a decade ago to solve Cloud Computing issues. Long transmission distances, higher data flow, data loss, latency, and energy consumption lead to providing services at the edge of the network. But, fog devices are known for being mobile and heterogenous. Their resources can be limited, and their availability can be constantly changing. A service placement optimization is needed to meet the QoS requirements. We propose a service placement orchestration, which functions as a multi-agent system. Fog computing services are represented by agents that can both work independently and cooperate. Service placement is being completed by a two-stage optimization method. Our service placement orchestrator is distributed, services are discovered dynamically, resources can be monitored, and communication messages among fog nodes can be signed and encrypted as a solution to the weakness of multi-agent systems due to the lack of monitoring tools and security.

Optimizing resource allocation for cluster D2D-assisted fog computing networks: A three-layer Stackelberg game approach

Resource management in fog computing is a highly challenging issue. Resource constraints of fog devices, the dynamic and diverse nature of workloads such as data-intensive, computationally intensive, and latency-sensitive applications, and the unpredictability of fog computing environments make it more challenging. How to collaboratively schedule edge, and end multi-layer ubiquitous computing resources to break through single node scale and resource bottlenecks to further improve computing performance also needs to be addressed. In this paper, we leverage idle resources on the user side, and study the resource allocation problems in the D2D-assisted fog computing networks. Firstly, we use an improved Louvain algorithm to cluster users and select the D2D device with the highest priority in each cluster as the cluster head to assist fog computing, where cluster heads can act as both servers and relays. Secondly, considering that fog nodes and D2D devices have limited resources and are not obligated to share their resources for free, we propose a price incentive method to construct a three-layer Stackelberg game model that maximizes the benefits of fog nodes and cluster heads while minimizing user costs. Then, we use the Lagrange multiplier method and the Karush–Kuhn–Tucker (KKT) conditions to solve the equilibrium point of the model to achieve our goal. Finally, the simulation results show that our proposed scheme markedly decreases the overall system cost in comparison to the four benchmark schemes. Moreover, in various scenarios the total cost of our scheme consistently remains lower than the other four schemes, affirming the efficiency of the scheme proposed in this paper.

Light-HIDRA: Scalable and decentralized resource orchestration in Fog-IoT environments

With the proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems, traditional resource orchestration mechanisms, executed on fog devices, encounter significant scalability, reliability and security challenges. To tackle these challenges, recent decentralized algorithms in Fog-IoT use Distributed Ledger Technologies to orchestrate resources and payments between peers. However, while distributed ledgers provide many desirable properties, their consensus mechanism introduces a performance bottleneck. This paper introduces Light-HIDRA, a consensus-less and decentralized resource orchestration system for Fog-IoT environments. At its core, Light-HIDRA uses Byzantine Reliable Broadcast (BRB) to coordinate actions without centralized control, therefore drastically reducing communication overhead and latency compared to consensus-based solutions. Light-HIDRA coordinates the scheduling and execution of workloads, and securely manages the payments that peers receive for dedicating resources to workloads. Light-HIDRA further increases performance and reduces overhead by grouping peers into distinct domains. We conduct an in-depth analysis of the protocol’s security properties, investigating its efficiency and robustness in diverse situations. We evaluate the performance of Light-HIDRA, highlighting its performance over HIDRA, a state-of-the-art baseline that uses smart contracts. Our experiments demonstrate that Light-HIDRA reduces the bandwidth usage by up to 57x, the latency of workload offloading by up to 142x, and shows superior throughput compared to HIDRA.

Dynamic microservice placement in multi-tier Fog networks

Fog computing extends Cloud-like infrastructure to the Edge, advancing Industrial Internet-of-Things (IIoT) applications in which parts of business-oriented enterprise systems, decoupled via fine-grained microservices, can be deployed in Fog networks in proximity to sensor devices. It boosts the responsiveness to IIoT events significantly where timely decision-making and actions are required, particularly for problematic trends and anomalies. However, microservice placement is a non-trivial problem in IIoT settings, given the dynamic occurrence of different IIoT events and variable resource needs of microservices against resource-constrained, heterogeneous, and distributed Fog devices. The cost of matching and deploying microservices in real-time, highly dynamic, and contentious settings can easily exceed the benefit of just-in-time Edge deployments. Current studies largely focus on managing the microservice placement from Cloud servers and offloading to the Cloud when Fog devices are resource-deficient. Yet, there is a lack of research focusing on efficient Fog resource use and managing the placement at the edge to improve the responsiveness. The complexity increases when multiple inter-dependent microservices with similar priorities are required to be placed on the same Fog devices. To mitigate this, we develop a tiered framework for dynamic microservice placement, in which costly resource decision-making for microservices is dedicated to Master Fog devices and Citizen Fog devices are exclusively assigned to executing microservice requests. Firstly, we implement a priority-based algorithm in each Master Fog device to identify the high-priority Edge-required microservices. Secondly, we sort the Fog devices according to their resource availability and place the microservices based on their priority and dependencies. Thirdly, we implement the strategies for microservice placement, scaling and request escalation in each Master Fog, managing a small number of Citizen Fog devices. These exempt the Citizen Fog devices from common resource and communication management responsibilities and enable them to allocate more resources to Edge-required microservices with a higher number of instances. Finally, we implement and evaluate our framework in a simulated Fog environment. The results outperform state-of-the-art frameworks in terms of efficient resource utilisation, resulting in reduced Cloud dependency by one-third compared to other approaches and average application execution time by 65–70%.

Optimizing fog device deployment for maximal network connectivity and edge coverage using metaheuristic algorithm

Fog computing emerged to address the limitations and challenges of traditional Cloud computing, particularly in handling real-time, heterogeneous, and latency-sensitive applications. However, the spread of Fog computing devices across the network introduces various challenges, especially concerning device connectivity and ensuring sufficient coverage to fulfil users’ requests. To maintain network operability, Fog Device Deployment (FDD) must effectively consider two crucial factors: connectivity and coverage. Network connectivity relies on FDD, determining the physical network topology, while coverage determines the accessibility of the Internet of Things (IoT) or edge devices. Both these objectives significantly impact the network performance and guarantee the network's Quality of Service (QoS). However, determining an optimal FDD method that reduces computation and communication overhead, and provides high network connectivity and coverage, is challenging. In this work, we propose an FDD algorithm that effectively connects the Fog devices for internal communication and covers maximum edge devices to entertain the requests. Firstly, FDD is formulated as a multi-objective optimization problem and then, an emerging metaheuristic Jaya Algorithm (JA) is applied to optimize the multi-objective function. The suitability of the JA, for the FDD problem, is substantiated by its rapid convergence and better computational complexity when contrasted with other contemporary population-based algorithms. In conclusion, the performance of the proposed method is assessed across a spectrum of benchmark-generated instances, each reflecting distinct Fog scenarios. The experimental outcomes showcase the proposed method's remarkable promise, especially when compared against state-of-the-art methodologies.

Efficient Resource Scheduling in Fog: A Multi-Objective Optimization Approach

Fog computing is a novel idea that extends cloud computing by offering services like processing, storage, analysis, and networking on fog devices closer to IoT devices. Numerous fog devices are required to process the ever-growing amount of data generated by IoT applications. The heterogeneous tasks from various IoT applications compete for a limited number of resources of these devices. The process of assigning this set of tasks to different available fog nodes according to QoS requirements for processing is resource scheduling. Resource scheduling aims to optimize resource utilization and performance metrics however, the dynamic nature of the Fog environment, resource-constrained, and heterogeneity in fog devices make resource scheduling a complex issue. This research presents the design and implementation of a multi-objective optimization-based resource scheduling algorithm using Modified Particle Swarm Optimization (MPSO) that addresses the application module placement and task allocation issues. This two-step MPSO-based resource scheduling model finds the optimal fog node to place each application module and assigns appropriate tasks to the most optimal fog nodes for execution. The proposed model unlocks the full potential of fog resources along with maximization of overall system performance in terms of optimization of cost, latency, energy consumption, and network usage. The simulation results indicate that using MPSO energy consumption is reduced by 53.94% and 43.58% as compared to First Come First Serve (FCFS) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), respectively. The loop delay, network usage and cost using MPSO are reduced by 40.3%, 67.69% and 90.01% respectively, as compared to PSO algorithm.

An energy-aware module placement strategy in fog-based healthcare monitoring systems

Fog computing and the Internet of Things (IoT) have revolutionized healthcare monitoring systems, enabling real-time health data collection and transmission while overcoming cloud computing limitations. However, efficiently selecting fog nodes for application modules with varying deadline requirements and ensuring adherence to quality of service (QoS) criteria pose significant challenges due to resource constraints and device limitations. In this paper, we present a novel two-layered hierarchical design for fog devices, leveraging cluster aggregation to optimize the selection of fog nodes for healthcare applications. We introduce three efficient algorithms to minimize system latency and reduce energy consumption in fog computing environments. Our proposed model is rigorously evaluated using the iFogSim toolkit and compared with cloud-based and latency-aware model [Mahmud R, Ramamohanarao K, Buyya R in ACM Transactions on Internet Technology.19, 2018, 10.1145/3186592]. In four distinct network topologies, our model exhibits an average latency reduction of at least 87% and energy consumption reduction of at least 76% when compared to the Cloud-based model. Similarly, when compared to the Latency-aware model proposed in [Mahmud R, Ramamohanarao K, Buyya R in ACM Transactions on Internet Technology. 19, 2018, 10.1145/3186592], our model showcases a minimum reduction of 43% in average latency and 27% in energy consumption. Our contribution lies in addressing the complexity of selecting fog nodes for application modules with diverse deadline requirements, while ensuring QoS. This work advances the field of real-time healthcare monitoring systems, promising substantial improvements in efficiency and effectiveness.

AI‐driven IoT‐fog analytics interactive smart system with data protection

AbstractIn recent decades, fog computing has contributed significantly to the expansion of smart cities. It generated numerous real‐time data and coped with time‐constraint applications. They use sensors, physical objects, and network standards to monitor health imaging, traffic surveillance, industrial management, and so forth. Interactive applications have been proposed for the Internet of Things (IoT) to control wireless channels and improve communication. However, most of the existing lack of handing network interference and a reliable monitoring process. Moreover, many solutions are vulnerable to external threats, resulting in inconsistent and untrustworthy information for end users. Thus, this article proposes a framework that considers possible shortest paths to provide the most reliable and low‐latency healthcare decision system using Q‐learning. In addition, fog devices offer a trusted transmission interference system and are kept secure. The proposed framework is specially designed for rapid real‐time medical data processing while enforcing robust security throughout the IoT‐based transmission process. To identify the health sensors in pairwise objects with the initial computing cost, the proposed framework applies graph theory. It also extracts the most effective and least loaded communication edges by examining the behaviour of devices. Moreover, the identities of devices are verified using lightweight timestamps and secret information, accordingly, it decreases the privacy threats.

LAAKA: Lightweight Anonymous Authentication and Key Agreement Scheme for Secure Fog-Driven IoT Systems

Fog computing is a new computing model with limited resources located near the Internet of Things (IoT) devices to provide low transmission delay, mobility, and location awareness services. However, fog technology not only extends the cloud resources but also inherits its properties and security problems, such as device capture, man-in-the-middle, secret key compromise, identity impersonation, and message replay attacks. These vulnerabilities pose significant risks to the integrity of IoT-fog communications. Nevertheless, the existing mutual authentication approaches either suffer from high computational overheads or fail to provide secure mutual authentication. To address this gap, this paper introduces LAAKA, a Lightweight Anonymous Authentication and Key Agreement scheme. Considering the constrained resources of IoT and fog devices, LAAKA utilizes lightweight operations such as hash function and bitwise XOR. Its main objective is to facilitate mutual authentication and establish secure session keys between IoT devices and fog servers, making it useful for various IoT applications. We validate the robustness of LAAKA against various security threats by conducting comprehensive formal security analysis, including Burrows-Abadi-Needham (BAN) logic and Random Oracle Model (ROM), as well as informal analysis. The efficacy of our scheme is further demonstrated through evaluation with the Scyther tool. Compared to other proposed authentication approaches, the results illustrate the superior performance and efficiency of our approach in enhancing the security features, minimizing the computational cost, and optimizing storage utilization.

Why it does not work? Metaheuristic task allocation approaches in Fog-enabled Internet of Drones

Several scenarios that use the Internet of Drones (IoD) networks require a Fog paradigm, where the Fog devices, provide time-sensitive functionality such as task allocation, scheduling, and resource optimization. The problem of efficient task allocation/scheduling is critical for optimizing Fog-enabled Internet of Drones performance. In recent years, many articles have employed meta-heuristic approaches for task scheduling/allocation in Fog-enabled IoT-based scenarios, focusing on network usage and delay, but neglecting execution time. While promising in the academic area, metaheuristic have many limitations in real-time environments due to their high execution time, resource-intensive nature, increased time complexity, and inherent uncertainty in achieving optimal solutions, as supported by empirical studies, case studies, and benchmarking data. We propose a task allocation method named F-DTA that is used as the fitness function of two metaheuristic approaches: Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and The Krill Herd Algorithm (KHA). We compare our proposed method by simulation using the iFogSim2 simulator, keeping all the settings the same for a fair evaluation and only focus on the execution time. The results confirm its superior performance in execution time, compared to the metaheuristics.

Adaptive Multi-Criteria-Based Load Balancing Technique for Resource Allocation in Fog-Cloud Environments

Recently, to deliver services directly to the network edge, fog computing, an emerging and developing technology, acts as a layer between the cloud and the IoT worlds. The cloud or fog computing nodes could be selected by IoTs applications to meet their resource needs. Due to the scarce resources of fog devices that are available, as well as the need to meet user demands for low latency and quick reaction times, resource allocation in the fog-cloud environment becomes a difficult problem. In this problem, the load balancing between several fog devices is the most important element in achieving resource efficiency and preventing overload on fog devices. In this paper, a new adaptive resource allocation technique for load balancing in a fog-cloud environment is proposed. The proposed technique ranks each fog device using hybrid multi-criteria decision- making approaches Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) and Fuzzy Technique for Order Performance by Similarity to Ideal Solution (FTOPSIS), then selects the most effective fog device based on the resulting ranking set. The simulation results show that the proposed technique outperforms existing techniques in terms of load balancing, response time, resource utilization, and energy consumption. The proposed technique decreases the number of fog nodes by 11%, load balancing variance by 69% and increases resource utilization to 90% which is comparatively higher than the comparable methods.

The Role of Fog Device Density in IoT-Fog-Cloud Systems

Fog computing has emerged as an essential technology for enabling real-time, low-latency responses in cloud-based applications within Internet of Things (IoT) systems. This study explored the impact of the number of fog devices (NFDs) on the performance of IoT-fog-cloud systems. Through comparative analysis, two scheduling algorithms—First Come First Serve (FCFS) and Priority—were evaluated across different scales of system deployment. The results indicated that the FCFS algorithm was optimal for systems with fewer NFDs, whereas the Priority algorithm proved advantageous in larger settings. These findings not only establish guidelines for selecting appropriate scheduling strategies based on the scale of fog device deployment but also provide strategic insights for businesses on the optimal distribution of computational resources. This research aids companies in deciding whether to centralize resources in fewer branches with more employees or to decentralize into more branches with fewer employees, thereby optimizing operational efficiency and responsiveness.

A hybrid meta-heuristic algorithm for multi-objective IoT service placement in fog computing environments

The fog computing paradigm is promising for deploying various delay-sensitive Internet of Things (IoT) applications. The resource-constrained fog devices restrict the number of application deployments due to a lack of efficient resource estimation and discovery mechanisms for various emergent heterogeneous IoT applications. An efficient resource allocation strategy is one of the best choices to meet these application’s Quality of Service (QoS) requirements and improve system performance. However, finding the best allocation strategy for IoT applications with more than one QoS parameter is a challenge, and it has been proved as a non-deterministic polynomial time (NP)-complete problem. This article formulates a classical weighted multi-objective IoT service placement to optimize three parameters, i.e., makespan, cost, and energy. The non-convexity nature of the solution space motivates us to focus on the population-based meta-heuristic algorithm, i.e. Genetic Algorithm (GA), Simulated Annealing (SA) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), along with their combination GA-SA, and GA-PSO. It implements the algorithm and compares it with the greedy-based random placement approach, varying the number of IoT applications with different parameters. The final results reveal that the hybrid method GA-SA outperforms other state-of-the-art algorithms.

Deep learning and optimization-based task scheduling algorithms for fog-cloud computing environment

Time-sensitive programs that are linked to smart services, such as smart healthcare as well as smart cities, are supported in large part by the fog computing domain. Due to the increased speed limitation of the cloud, Cloud Computing (CC) is a competent platform for fog in data processing, but it is unable to meet the demands of time-sensitive programs. The procedure of resource provisioning, as well as allocation in either a fog-cloud structure, takes into account dynamic changes in user requirements, and resources with limited access in fog devices are more difficult to manage. Due to the continual changes in user requirement factors, the deadline represents the biggest obstacle in the fog computing structure. Hence the objective is to minimize the total cost involved in scheduling by maximizing resource utilization. For dynamic scheduling in the fog-cloud computing model, the efficiency of hybridization of the Grey Wolf Optimizer (GWO) and Lion Algorithm (LA) is developed in this study. In terms of energy costs, processing costs, and communication costs, the created GWOMLA-based Deep Belief Network (DBN) performed better and outruns the other traditional models.

E‐TOALB: An efficient task offloading in IoT‐fog networks

SummarySmart devices are concerned about the processing and computation of tasks due to their tiny nature. They prefer to offload their tasks to the cloud for processing and computation. Due to the huge amount of data being generated by smart devices, the cloud becomes inefficient in terms of huge delay. Thus, Processing tasks in the cloud can add latency and finally needs to be addressed. Thus, fog computing is an alternative to the latency issue. The tasks are offloaded to fog instead of the cloud. In this paper, e‐TOALB (enhanced task offloading and load balancing), a modified and enhanced nature‐inspired and meta‐heuristic ant colony optimization is used to offload tasks in a fog environment. The results obtained by the proposed method are compared with Particle swarm optimization (PSO), round robin (RR), and ant colony optimization. The numerical results clearly show an improvement in average response time and load sharing among all fog nodes. The results of the proposed model produce low response time, low average service time, and low standard deviation. The proposed scheme aims to find the best possible decision for offloading tasks to nearby fog devices and to find an optimal route for offloading with the least communication cost and average service time.

Multi-objective task scheduling method for cyber–physical–social systems in fog computing

Cyber–physical–social systems refer to new systems that involve a large number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices connected through an interconnected network. These systems gather data for various services such as transportation, energy, healthcare, etc. This data is then transmitted to the cloud layer for storage, processing, and access. To handle the significant workload offloaded from resource-constrained IoT devices without latency or bandwidth issues, a technology called fog computing has emerged as an intermediary layer between the cloud and IoT devices. The quality of service (QoS) provided by fog computing relies on efficient task scheduling to optimize energy consumption and maximum execution time. This task scheduling problem is known to be NP-hard and cannot be solved with high precision in a reasonable time using traditional techniques or existing metaheuristic-based task schedulers. Therefore, this study proposes a new multi-objective task scheduling approach based on a modified marine predators algorithm (MMPA) to simultaneously minimize energy consumption and make-span under the Pareto optimality theory. This variant is named the multi-objective MMPA (M2MPA). M2MPA enhances the performance of the MPA by incorporating the polynomial crossover operator to improve its exploration operator and the adaptive CF parameter to enhance its exploitation operator. The effectiveness of M2MPA is evaluated using eighteen tasks with different scales (small, large, and medium) and heterogeneous workloads assigned to two hundred fog devices with varying processing speeds. Finally, M2MPA is compared with six well-established techniques using various performance indicators, including carbon dioxide emission rate, flowtime, make-span, and energy consumption. The experimental findings demonstrate the substantial superiority of M2MPA over all competing algorithms across different performance indicators and the Wilcoxon rank-sum test. Quantitatively, M2MPA achieves an average make-span of 10.095, average energy consumption of 3.77E+06, average flowtime of 8.39E+03, and average carbon dioxide emission rate of 8.88E+06.

Efficient load balancing Adaptive BNBKnapsack Algorithm for Edge computing to improve performance of network

INTRODUCTION: In present days, Automation of everything has become essential. Internet of things (IoT) play an important role among all medical advances of IT. In this paper, feasible solutions are discussed to compare and design better healthcare systems. A thorough investigation and survey of suitable approaches were done to select IoT based systems in hospitals consisting of various high precision sensors. OBJECTIVES: The challenge healthcare system face is to manage the real time patient’s data with high accuracy. Second challenge is at fog devices level to manage the load distribution to all sensors with limited availability of bandwidth. METHODS: This paper summarizes the selection criterions of suitable load balancing algorithms to reduce energy consumption and computational cost of fog devices and increase the network usage that are supposed to be used in IoT based healthcare systems. According to the survey BNBKnapack algorithm has been selected as best suitable approach to analyze the overall performance of fog devices and results are also verify the same. RESULTS: Comparative analysis of Overall performance of fog devices has been proposed with using SJF algorithm and Adaptive BNBKnapsack algorithm. It has been observed by analysing system performance, which is found as best among other load balancing algorithm Adaptive BNBKnapsack is successfully reduce the energy consumption by (99.29%), computational cost by (98.34%) and increase the network usage by (99.95%) of system CONCLUSION: It has been observed by analysing system performance, Adaptive BNBKnapsack Load balancing is successfully able to reduce the computational cost and energy consumption also increase the network usage of the fog network. The performance of the system is found best among other load balancing algorithm.

Evaluating NiFi and MQTT based serverless data pipelines in fog computing environments

Recent advancements in Internet of Things (IoT) technology have driven massive amounts of raw data. Due to the hardware limitations of the constraint IoT environments, we cannot fully perform all data analytical tasks in the local environment. In contrast, data transferring, storing, and processing in the cloud suffer from cloud cost, latency and security issues. In this context, we require a multi-layer data processing environment to balance all these issues. Data pipeline concepts allow data processing between source and destination on multiple fog devices. On the other hand, IoT applications are event-driven. So, building these apps in a serverless computing manner minimizes operational and billing costs. Moreover, this provides flexibility to deploy tasks anywhere, irrespective of the underlying operating system. In this paper, we investigated two serverless data pipeline approaches designed with Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) and Apache NiFi. Our proposed approaches were tested with the image streaming data, where we performed object detection in the images. Our experimental results compared these two approaches regarding pipeline execution time, memory and CPU usage. The results conclude that the Apache NiFi-based serverless data pipeline consumes more CPU than MQTT-based serverless data pipeline, however outperforms it in terms of execution time and memory utilization.