Edge computing platforms for Internet of Things

Internet of Things (IoT) has the potential to transform many domains of human activity, enabled by the collection of data from the physical world at a massive scale. As the projected growth of IoT data exceeds that of available network capacity, transferring it to centralized cloud data centers is infeasible. Edge computing aims to solve this problem by processing data at the edge of the network, enabling applications with specialized requirements that cloud computing cannot meet. The current market of platforms that support building IoT applications is very fragmented, with offerings available from hundreds of companies with no common architecture. This threatens the realization of IoT's potential: with more interoperability, a new class of applications that combine the collected data and use it in new ways could emerge. In this thesis, promising IoT platforms for edge computing are surveyed. First, an understanding of current challenges in the field is gained through studying the available literature on the topic. Second, IoT edge platforms having the most potential to meet these challenges are chosen and reviewed for their capabilities. Finally, the platforms are compared against each other, with a focus on their potential to meet the challenges learned in the first part. The work shows that AWS IoT for the edge and Microsoft Azure IoT Edge have mature feature sets. However, these platforms are tied to their respective cloud platforms, limiting interoperability and the possibility of switching providers. On the other hand, open source EdgeX Foundry and KubeEdge have the potential for more standardization and interoperability in IoT but are limited in functionality for building practical IoT applications

Managing the far-Edge: are today's centralized solutions a good fit

Edge computing has established itself as the foundation for next-generation mobile networks, IT infrastructure, and industrial systems thanks to promised low network latency, computation offloading, and data locality. These properties empower key use-cases like Industry 4.0, Vehicular Communication and Internet of Things. Nowadays implementation of Edge computing is based on extensions to available Cloud computing software tools. While this approach accelerates adoption, it hinders the deployment of the aforementioned use-cases that requires an infrastructure largely more decentralized than Cloud data centers, notably in the far-Edge of the network. In this context, this work aims at: (i) to analyze the differences between Cloud and Edge infrastructures, (ii) to analyze the architecture adopted by the most prominent open-source Edge computing solutions, and (iii) to experimentally evaluate those solutions in terms of scalability and service instantiation time in a medium-size far Edge system. Results show that mainstream Edge solutions require powerful centralized controllers and always-on connectivity, making them unsuitable for highly decentralized scenarios in the far-Edge where stable and high-bandwidth links are not ubiquitous.This work has been partially funded by the H2020 collaborative Europe/Taiwan research project 5G-DIVE (grant no. 589881) and by the H2020 European collaborative research project DAEMON (grant no. 101017109)

The First Verification Test of Space-Ground Collaborative Intelligence via Cloud-Native Satellites

Recent advancements in satellite technologies and the declining cost of access to space have led to the emergence of large satellite constellations in Low Earth Orbit. However, these constellations often rely on bent-pipe architecture, resulting in high communication costs. Existing onboard inference architectures suffer from limitations in terms of low accuracy and inflexibility in the deployment and management of in-orbit applications. To address these challenges, we propose a cloud-native-based satellite design specifically tailored for Earth Observation tasks, enabling diverse computing paradigms. In this work, we present a case study of a satellite-ground collaborative inference system deployed in the Tiansuan constellation, demonstrating a remarkable 50\% accuracy improvement and a substantial 90\% data reduction. Our work sheds light on in-orbit energy, where in-orbit computing accounts for 17\% of the total onboard energy consumption. Our approach represents a significant advancement of cloud-native satellite, aiming to enhance the accuracy of in-orbit computing while simultaneously reducing communication cost.Comment: Accepted by China Communication

The AutoSPADA Platform: User-Friendly Edge Computing for Distributed Learning and Data Analytics in Connected Vehicles

Contemporary connected vehicles host numerous applications, such as diagnostics and navigation, and new software is continuously being developed. However, the development process typically requires offline batch processing of large data volumes. In an edge computing approach, data analysts and developers can instead process sensor data directly on computational resources inside vehicles. This enables rapid prototyping to shorten development cycles and reduce the time to create new business values or insights. This paper presents the design, implementation, and operation of the AutoSPADA edge computing platform for distributed data analytics. The platform's design follows scalability, reliability, resource efficiency, privacy, and security principles promoted through mature and industrially proven technologies. In AutoSPADA, computational tasks are general Python scripts, and we provide a library to, for example, read signals from the vehicle and publish results to the cloud. Hence, users only need Python knowledge to use the platform. Moreover, the platform is designed to be extended to support additional programming languages.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables, 1 algorithm, 1 code listin

Leveraging Kubernetes in Edge-Native Cable Access Convergence

Public clouds provide infrastructure services and deployment frameworks for modern cloud-native applications. As the cloud-native paradigm has matured, containerization, orchestration and Kubernetes have become its fundamental building blocks. For the next step of cloud-native, an interest to extend it to the edge computing is emerging. Primary reasons for this are low-latency use cases and the desire to have uniformity in cloud-edge continuum. Cable access networks as specialized type of edge networks are not exception here. As the cable industry transitions to distributed architectures and plans the next steps to virtualize its on-premise network functions, there are opportunities to achieve synergy advantages from convergence of access technologies and services. Distributed cable networks deploy resource-constrained devices like RPDs and RMDs deep in the edge networks. These devices can be redesigned to support more than one access technology and to provide computing services for other edge tenants with MEC-like architectures. Both of these cases benefit from virtualization. It is here where cable access convergence and cloud-native transition to edge-native intersect. However, adapting cloud-native in the edge presents a challenge, since cloud-native container runtimes and native Kubernetes are not optimal solutions in diverse edge environments. Therefore, this thesis takes as its goal to describe current landscape of lightweight cloud-native runtimes and tools targeting the edge. While edge-native as a concept is taking its first steps, tools like KubeEdge, K3s and Virtual Kubelet can be seen as the most mature reference projects for edge-compatible solution types. Furthermore, as the container runtimes are not yet fully edge-ready, WebAssembly seems like a promising alternative runtime for lightweight, portable and secure Kubernetes compatible workloads

Scalable and High Available Kubernetes Cluster in Edge Environments for IoT Applications

The number of IoT and sensor devices is expected to reach 25 billion by 2030. Many IoT appli- cations, such as connected vehicle and smart factory that require high availability, scalability, low latency, and security have appeared in the world. There have been many attempts to use cloud computing for IoT applications, but the mentioned requirements cannot be ensured in cloud environments. To solve this problem, edge computing has appeared in the world. In edge environments, containerization technology is useful to deploy apps with limited resources. In this thesis, two types of high available Kubernetes architecture (2 nodes with an external DB and 3 nodes with embedded DB) were surveyed and implemented using K3s distribution that is suitable for edges. By having a few experiments with the implemented K3s clusters, this thesis shows that the K3s clusters can provide high availability and scalability. We discuss the limitations of the implementations and provide possible solutions too. In addition, we provide the resource usages of each cluster in terms of CPU, RAM, and disk. Both clusters need only less than 10% CPU and about 500MB RAM on average. However, we could see that the 3 nodes cluster with embedded DB uses more resources than the 2 nodes + external DB cluster when changing the status of clusters. Finally, we show that the implemented K3s clusters are suitable for many IoT applications such as connected vehicle and smart factory. If an application that needs high availability and scalability has to be deployed in edge environments, the K3s clusters can provide good solutions to achieve the goals of the applications. The 2 nodes + external DB cluster is suitable for the applications where the amount of data fluctuate often, or where there is a stable connection with the external DB. On the other hand, the 3 nodes cluster will be suitable for the applications that need high availability of the database even in poor internet connection. ACM Computing Classification System (CCS) Computer systems organization → Embedded and cyber-physical systems Human-centered computing → Ubiquitous and mobile computin