Learning and Management for Internet-of-Things: Accounting for Adaptivity and Scalability

Internet-of-Things (IoT) envisions an intelligent infrastructure of networked smart devices offering task-specific monitoring and control services. The unique features of IoT include extreme heterogeneity, massive number of devices, and unpredictable dynamics partially due to human interaction. These call for foundational innovations in network design and management. Ideally, it should allow efficient adaptation to changing environments, and low-cost implementation scalable to massive number of devices, subject to stringent latency constraints. To this end, the overarching goal of this paper is to outline a unified framework for online learning and management policies in IoT through joint advances in communication, networking, learning, and optimization. From the network architecture vantage point, the unified framework leverages a promising fog architecture that enables smart devices to have proximity access to cloud functionalities at the network edge, along the cloud-to-things continuum. From the algorithmic perspective, key innovations target online approaches adaptive to different degrees of nonstationarity in IoT dynamics, and their scalable model-free implementation under limited feedback that motivates blind or bandit approaches. The proposed framework aspires to offer a stepping stone that leads to systematic designs and analysis of task-specific learning and management schemes for IoT, along with a host of new research directions to build on.Comment: Submitted on June 15 to Proceeding of IEEE Special Issue on Adaptive and Scalable Communication Network

AI-powered edge computing evolution for beyond 5G communication networks

Edge computing is a key enabling technology that is expected to play a crucial role in beyond 5G (B5G) and 6G communication networks. By bringing computation closer to where the data is generated, and leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities for advanced automation and orchestration, edge computing can enable a wide range of emerging applications with extreme requirements in terms of latency and computation, across multiple vertical domains. In this context, this paper first discusses the key technological challenges for the seamless integration of edge computing within B5G/6G and then presents a roadmap for the edge computing evolution, proposing a novel design approach for an open, intelligent, trustworthy, and distributed edge architecture.VERGE has received funding from the Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking (SNS JU) under the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No 101096034.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

DYVERSE: DYnamic VERtical Scaling in Multi-tenant Edge Environments

Multi-tenancy in resource-constrained environments is a key challenge in Edge computing. In this paper, we develop 'DYVERSE: DYnamic VERtical Scaling in Edge' environments, which is the first light-weight and dynamic vertical scaling mechanism for managing resources allocated to applications for facilitating multi-tenancy in Edge environments. To enable dynamic vertical scaling, one static and three dynamic priority management approaches that are workload-aware, community-aware and system-aware, respectively are proposed. This research advocates that dynamic vertical scaling and priority management approaches reduce Service Level Objective (SLO) violation rates. An online-game and a face detection workload in a Cloud-Edge test-bed are used to validate the research. The merits of DYVERSE is that there is only a sub-second overhead per Edge server when 32 Edge servers are deployed on a single Edge node. When compared to executing applications on the Edge servers without dynamic vertical scaling, static priorities and dynamic priorities reduce SLO violation rates of requests by up to 4% and 12% for the online game, respectively, and in both cases 6% for the face detection workload. Moreover, for both workloads, the system-aware dynamic vertical scaling method effectively reduces the latency of non-violated requests, when compared to other methods

Adaptive learning-based resource management strategy in fog-to-cloud

Technology in the twenty-first century is rapidly developing and driving us into a new smart computing world, and emerging lots of new computing architectures. Fog-to-Cloud (F2C) is among one of them, which emerges to ensure the commitment for bringing the higher computing facilities near to the edge of the network and also help the large-scale computing system to be more intelligent. As the F2C is in its infantile state, therefore one of the biggest challenges for this computing paradigm is to efficiently manage the computing resources. Mainly, to address this challenge, in this work, we have given our sole interest for designing the initial architectural framework to build a proper, adaptive and efficient resource management mechanism in F2C. F2C has been proposed as a combined, coordinated and hierarchical computing platform, where a vast number of heterogeneous computing devices are participating. Notably, their versatility creates a massive challenge for effectively handling them. Even following any large-scale smart computing system, it can easily recognize that various kind of services is served for different purposes. Significantly, every service corresponds with the various tasks, which have different resource requirements. So, knowing the characteristics of participating devices and system offered services is giving advantages to build effective and resource management mechanism in F2C-enabled system. Considering these facts, initially, we have given our intense focus for identifying and defining the taxonomic model for all the participating devices and system involved services-tasks. In any F2C-enabled system consists of a large number of small Internet-of-Things (IoTs) and generating a continuous and colossal amount of sensing-data by capturing various environmental events. Notably, this sensing-data is one of the key ingredients for various smart services which have been offered by the F2C-enabled system. Besides that, resource statistical information is also playing a crucial role, for efficiently providing the services among the system consumers. Continuous monitoring of participating devices generates a massive amount of resource statistical information in the F2C-enabled system. Notably, having this information, it becomes much easier to know the device's availability and suitability for executing some tasks to offer some services. Therefore, ensuring better service facilities for any latency-sensitive services, it is essential to securely distribute the sensing-data and resource statistical information over the network. Considering these matters, we also proposed and designed a secure and distributed database framework for effectively and securely distribute the data over the network. To build an advanced and smarter system is necessarily required an effective mechanism for the utilization of system resources. Typically, the utilization and resource handling process mainly depend on the resource selection and allocation mechanism. The prediction of resources (e.g., RAM, CPU, Disk, etc.) usage and performance (i.e., in terms of task execution time) helps the selection and allocation process. Thus, adopting the machine learning (ML) techniques is much more useful for designing an advanced and sophisticated resource allocation mechanism in the F2C-enabled system. Adopting and performing the ML techniques in F2C-enabled system is a challenging task. Especially, the overall diversification and many other issues pose a massive challenge for successfully performing the ML techniques in any F2C-enabled system. Therefore, we have proposed and designed two different possible architectural schemas for performing the ML techniques in the F2C-enabled system to achieve an adaptive, advance and sophisticated resource management mechanism in the F2C-enabled system. Our proposals are the initial footmarks for designing the overall architectural framework for resource management mechanism in F2C-enabled system.La tecnologia del segle XXI avança ràpidament i ens condueix cap a un nou món intel·ligent, creant nous models d'arquitectures informàtiques. Fog-to-Cloud (F2C) és un d’ells, i sorgeix per garantir el compromís d’acostar les instal·lacions informàtiques a prop de la xarxa i també ajudar el sistema informàtic a gran escala a ser més intel·ligent. Com que el F2C es troba en un estat preliminar, un dels majors reptes d’aquest paradigma tecnològic és gestionar eficientment els recursos informàtics. Per fer front a aquest repte, en aquest treball hem centrat el nostre interès en dissenyar un marc arquitectònic per construir un mecanisme de gestió de recursos adequat, adaptatiu i eficient a F2C.F2C ha estat concebut com una plataforma informàtica combinada, coordinada i jeràrquica, on participen un gran nombre de dispositius heterogenis. La seva versatilitat planteja un gran repte per gestionar-los de manera eficaç. Els serveis que s'hi executen consten de diverses tasques, que tenen requisits de recursos diferents. Per tant, conèixer les característiques dels dispositius participants i dels serveis que ofereix el sistema és un requisit per dissenyar mecanismes eficaços i de gestió de recursos en un sistema habilitat per F2C. Tenint en compte aquests fets, inicialment ens hem centrat en identificar i definir el model taxonòmic per a tots els dispositius i sistemes implicats en l'execució de tasques de serveis. Qualsevol sistema habilitat per F2C inclou en un gran nombre de dispositius petits i connectats (conegut com a Internet of Things, o IoT) que generen una quantitat contínua i colossal de dades de detecció capturant diversos events ambientals. Aquestes dades són un dels ingredients clau per a diversos serveis intel·ligents que ofereix F2C. A més, el seguiment continu dels dispositius participants genera igualment una gran quantitat d'informació estadística. En particular, en tenir aquesta informació, es fa molt més fàcil conèixer la disponibilitat i la idoneïtat dels dispositius per executar algunes tasques i oferir alguns serveis. Per tant, per garantir millors serveis sensibles a la latència, és essencial distribuir de manera equilibrada i segura la informació estadística per la xarxa. Tenint en compte aquests assumptes, també hem proposat i dissenyat un entorn de base de dades segura i distribuïda per gestionar de manera eficaç i segura les dades a la xarxa. Per construir un sistema avançat i intel·ligent es necessita un mecanisme eficaç per a la gestió de l'ús dels recursos del sistema. Normalment, el procés d’utilització i manipulació de recursos depèn principalment del mecanisme de selecció i assignació de recursos. La predicció de l’ús i el rendiment de recursos (per exemple, RAM, CPU, disc, etc.) en termes de temps d’execució de tasques ajuda al procés de selecció i assignació. Adoptar les tècniques d’aprenentatge automàtic (conegut com a Machine Learning, o ML) és molt útil per dissenyar un mecanisme d’assignació de recursos avançat i sofisticat en el sistema habilitat per F2C. L’adopció i la realització de tècniques de ML en un sistema F2C és una tasca complexa. Especialment, la diversificació general i molts altres problemes plantegen un gran repte per realitzar amb èxit les tècniques de ML. Per tant, en aquesta recerca hem proposat i dissenyat dos possibles esquemes arquitectònics diferents per realitzar tècniques de ML en el sistema habilitat per F2C per aconseguir un mecanisme de gestió de recursos adaptatiu, avançat i sofisticat en un sistema F2C. Les nostres propostes són els primers passos per dissenyar un marc arquitectònic general per al mecanisme de gestió de recursos en un sistema habilitat per F2C.Postprint (published version

Function-as-a-Service for the Cloud-to-Thing Continuum: A Systematic Mapping Study

Until recently, Internet of Things applications were mainly seen as a means to gather sensor data for further processing in the Cloud. Nowadays, with the advent of Edge and Fog Computing, digital services are dragged closer to the physical world, with data processing and storage tasks distributed across the whole Cloud-to-Thing continuum. Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) is gaining momentum as one of the promising programming models for such digital services. This work investigates the current research landscape of applying FaaS over the Cloud-to-Thing continuum. In particular, we investigate the support offered by existing FaaS platforms for the deployment, placement, orchestration, and execution of functions across the whole continuum using the Systematic Mapping Study methodology. We selected 33 primary studies and analyzed their data, bringing a broad view on the current research landscape in the area.acceptedVersio