Application Management in Fog Computing Environments: A Taxonomy, Review and Future Directions

The Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm is being rapidly adopted for the creation of smart environments in various domains. The IoT-enabled Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) associated with smart city, healthcare, Industry 4.0 and Agtech handle a huge volume of data and require data processing services from different types of applications in real-time. The Cloud-centric execution of IoT applications barely meets such requirements as the Cloud datacentres reside at a multi-hop distance from the IoT devices. \textit{Fog computing}, an extension of Cloud at the edge network, can execute these applications closer to data sources. Thus, Fog computing can improve application service delivery time and resist network congestion. However, the Fog nodes are highly distributed, heterogeneous and most of them are constrained in resources and spatial sharing. Therefore, efficient management of applications is necessary to fully exploit the capabilities of Fog nodes. In this work, we investigate the existing application management strategies in Fog computing and review them in terms of architecture, placement and maintenance. Additionally, we propose a comprehensive taxonomy and highlight the research gaps in Fog-based application management. We also discuss a perspective model and provide future research directions for further improvement of application management in Fog computing

Survivable Probability of Network Slicing with Random Physical Link Failure

The fifth generation of communication technology (5G) revolutionizes mobile networks and the associated ecosystems through the integration of cross-domain networks. Network slicing is an enabling technology for 5G as it provides dynamic, on-demand, and reliable logical network slices (i.e., network services) over a common physical network/infrastructure. Since a network slice is subject to failures originated from disruptions, namely node or link failures, in the physical infrastructure, our utmost interest is to evaluate the reliability of a network slice before assigning it to customers. In this paper, we propose an evaluation metric, \textit{survivable probability}, to quantify the reliability of a network slice under random physical link failure(s). We prove the existence of a \textit{base protecting spanning tree set} which has the same survivable probability as that of a network slice. We propose the necessary and sufficient conditions to identify a base protecting spanning tree set and develop corresponding mathematical formulations, which can be used to generate reliable network slices in the 5G environment. In addition to proving the viability of our approaches with simulation results, we also discuss how our problems and approaches are related to the Steiner tree problems and present their computational complexity and approximability.Comment: 12 pages, 11 figure

Self-enforcing Game Theory-based Resource Allocation for LoRaWAN Assisted Public Safety Communications

Public safety networks avail to disseminate information during emergency situations through its dedicated servers. Public safety networks accommodate public safety communication (PSC) applications to track the location of its utilizers and enable to sustain transmissions even in the crucial scenarios. Despite that, if the traditional setups responsible for PSCs are unavailable, it becomes prodigiously arduous to handle any of the safety applications, which may cause havoc in the society. Dependence on a secondary network may assist to solve such an issue. But, the secondary networks should be facilely deployable and must not cause exorbitant overheads in terms of cost and operation. For this, LoRaWAN can be considered as an ideal solution as it provides low power and long-range communication. However, an excessive utilization of the secondary network may result in high depletion of its own resources and can lead to a complete shutdown of services, which is a quandary at hand. As a solution, this paper proposes a novel network model via a combination of LoRaWAN and traditional public safety networks, and uses a self-enforcing agreement based game theory for allocating resources efficiently amongst the available servers. The proposed approach adopts memory and energy constraints as agreements, which are satisfied through Nash equilibrium. The numerical results show that the proposed approach is capable of efficiently allocating the resources with sufficiently high gains for resource conservation, network sustainability, resource restorations and probability to continue at the present conditions even in the complete absence of traditional Access Points (APs) compared with a baseline scenario with no failure of nodes.Comment: 16 Pages, 11 Figures, 2 Table

CitizenGrid: An Online Middleware for Crowdsourcing Scientific Research

In the last few years, contributions of the general public in scientific projects has increased due to the advancement of communication and computing technologies. Internet played an important role in connecting scientists and volunteers who are interested in participating in their scientific projects. However, despite potential benefits, only a limited number of crowdsourcing based large-scale science (citizen science) projects have been deployed due to the complexity involved in setting them up and running them. In this paper, we present CitizenGrid - an online middleware platform which addresses security and deployment complexity issues by making use of cloud computing and virtualisation technologies. CitizenGrid incentivises scientists to make their small-to-medium scale applications available as citizen science projects by: 1) providing a directory of projects through a web-based portal that makes applications easy to discover; 2) providing flexibility to participate in, monitor, and control multiple citizen science projects from a common interface; 3) supporting diverse categories of citizen science projects. The paper describes the design, development and evaluation of CitizenGrid and its use cases.Comment: 11 page

A Survey on Low Latency Towards 5G: RAN, Core Network and Caching Solutions

The fifth generation (5G) wireless network technology is to be standardized by 2020, where main goals are to improve capacity, reliability, and energy efficiency, while reducing latency and massively increasing connection density. An integral part of 5G is the capability to transmit touch perception type real-time communication empowered by applicable robotics and haptics equipment at the network edge. In this regard, we need drastic changes in network architecture including core and radio access network (RAN) for achieving end-to-end latency on the order of 1 ms. In this paper, we present a detailed survey on the emerging technologies to achieve low latency communications considering three different solution domains: RAN, core network, and caching. We also present a general overview of 5G cellular networks composed of software defined network (SDN), network function virtualization (NFV), caching, and mobile edge computing (MEC) capable of meeting latency and other 5G requirements.Comment: Accepted in IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorial

Software Defined Networking Enabled Wireless Network Virtualization: Challenges and Solutions

Next generation (5G) wireless networks are expected to support the massive data and accommodate a wide range of services/use cases with distinct requirements in a cost-effective, flexible, and agile manner. As a promising solution, wireless network virtualization (WNV), or network slicing, enables multiple virtual networks to share the common infrastructure on demand, and to be customized for different services/use cases. This article focuses on network-wide resource allocation for realizing WNV. Specifically, the motivations, the enabling platforms, and the benefits of WNV, are first reviewed. Then, resource allocation for WNV along with the technical challenges is discussed. Afterwards, a software defined networking (SDN) enabled resource allocation framework is proposed to facilitate WNV, including the key procedures and the corresponding modeling approaches. Furthermore, a case study is provided as an example of resource allocation in WNV. Finally, some open research topics essential to WNV are discussed.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures. To appear in IEEE Network Magazin

Adaptive Event Dispatching in Serverless Computing Infrastructures

Serverless computing is an emerging Cloud service model. It is currently gaining momentum as the next step in the evolution of hosted computing from capacitated machine virtualisation and microservices towards utility computing. The term "serverless" has become a synonym for the entirely resource-transparent deployment model of cloud-based event-driven distributed applications. This work investigates how adaptive event dispatching can improve serverless platform resource efficiency and contributes a novel approach that allows for better scaling and fitting of the platform's resource consumption to actual demand

A collaborative citizen science platform for real-time volunteer computing and games

Volunteer computing (VC) or distributed computing projects are common in the citizen cyberscience (CCS) community and present extensive opportunities for scientists to make use of computing power donated by volunteers to undertake large-scale scientific computing tasks. Volunteer computing is generally a non-interactive process for those contributing computing resources to a project whereas volunteer thinking (VT) or distributed thinking, which allows volunteers to participate interactively in citizen cyberscience projects to solve human computation tasks. In this paper we describe the integration of three tools, the Virtual Atom Smasher (VAS) game developed by CERN, LiveQ, a job distribution middleware, and CitizenGrid, an online platform for hosting and providing computation to CCS projects. This integration demonstrates the combining of volunteer computing and volunteer thinking to help address the scientific and educational goals of games like VAS. The paper introduces the three tools and provides details of the integration process along with further potential usage scenarios for the resulting platform.Comment: 12 pages, 13 figure

Reinforcement Learning-based Application Autoscaling in the Cloud: A Survey

Reinforcement Learning (RL) has demonstrated a great potential for automatically solving decision-making problems in complex uncertain environments. RL proposes a computational approach that allows learning through interaction in an environment with stochastic behavior, where agents take actions to maximize some cumulative short-term and long-term rewards. Some of the most impressive results have been shown in Game Theory where agents exhibited superhuman performance in games like Go or Starcraft 2, which led to its gradual adoption in many other domains, including Cloud Computing. Therefore, RL appears as a promising approach for Autoscaling in Cloud since it is possible to learn transparent (with no human intervention), dynamic (no static plans), and adaptable (constantly updated) resource management policies to execute applications. These are three important distinctive aspects to consider in comparison with other widely used autoscaling policies that are defined in an ad-hoc way or statically computed as in solutions based on meta-heuristics. Autoscaling exploits the Cloud elasticity to optimize the execution of applications according to given optimization criteria, which demands to decide when and how to scale-up/down computational resources, and how to assign them to the upcoming processing workload. Such actions have to be taken considering that the Cloud is a dynamic and uncertain environment. Motivated by this, many works apply RL to the autoscaling problem in the Cloud. In this work, we survey exhaustively those proposals from major venues, and uniformly compare them based on a set of proposed taxonomies. We also discuss open problems and prospective research in the area.Comment: 40 pages, 9 figure

iSTRICT: An Interdependent Strategic Trust Mechanism for the Cloud-Enabled Internet of Controlled Things

The cloud-enabled Internet of controlled things (IoCT) envisions a network of sensors, controllers, and actuators connected through a local cloud in order to intelligently control physical devices. Because cloud services are vulnerable to advanced persistent threats (APTs), each device in the IoCT must strategically decide whether to trust cloud services that may be compromised. In this paper, we present iSTRICT, an interdependent strategic trust mechanism for the cloud-enabled IoCT. iSTRICT is composed of three interdependent layers. In the cloud layer, iSTRICT uses FlipIt games to conceptualize APTs. In the communication layer, it captures the interaction between devices and the cloud using signaling games. In the physical layer, iSTRICT uses optimal control to quantify the utilities in the higher level games. Best response dynamics link the three layers in an overall "game-of-games," for which the outcome is captured by a concept called Gestalt Nash equilibrium (GNE). We prove the existence of a GNE under a set of natural assumptions and develop an adaptive algorithm to iteratively compute the equilibrium. Finally, we apply iSTRICT to trust management for autonomous vehicles that rely on measurements from remote sources. We show that strategic trust in the communication layer achieves a worst-case probability of compromise for any attack and defense costs in the cyber layer.Comment: To appear in IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Securit