Addressing the Node Discovery Problem in Fog Computing

In recent years, the Internet of Things (IoT) has gained a lot of attention due to connecting various sensor devices with the cloud, in order to enable smart applications such as: smart traffic management, smart houses, and smart grids, among others. Due to the growing popularity of the IoT, the number of Internet-connected devices has increased significantly. As a result, these devices generate a huge amount of network traffic which may lead to bottlenecks, and eventually increase the communication latency with the cloud. To cope with such issues, a new computing paradigm has emerged, namely: fog computing. Fog computing enables computing that spans from the cloud to the edge of the network in order to distribute the computations of the IoT data, and to reduce the communication latency. However, fog computing is still in its infancy, and there are still related open problems. In this paper, we focus on the node discovery problem, i.e., how to add new compute nodes to a fog computing system. Moreover, we discuss how addressing this problem can have a positive impact on various aspects of fog computing, such as fault tolerance, resource heterogeneity, proximity awareness, and scalability. Finally, based on the experimental results that we produce by simulating various distributed compute nodes, we show how addressing the node discovery problem can improve the fault tolerance of a fog computing system

Foggy clouds and cloudy fogs: a real need for coordinated management of fog-to-cloud computing systems

The recent advances in cloud services technology are fueling a plethora of information technology innovation, including networking, storage, and computing. Today, various flavors have evolved of IoT, cloud computing, and so-called fog computing, a concept referring to capabilities of edge devices and users' clients to compute, store, and exchange data among each other and with the cloud. Although the rapid pace of this evolution was not easily foreseeable, today each piece of it facilitates and enables the deployment of what we commonly refer to as a smart scenario, including smart cities, smart transportation, and smart homes. As most current cloud, fog, and network services run simultaneously in each scenario, we observe that we are at the dawn of what may be the next big step in the cloud computing and networking evolution, whereby services might be executed at the network edge, both in parallel and in a coordinated fashion, as well as supported by the unstoppable technology evolution. As edge devices become richer in functionality and smarter, embedding capacities such as storage or processing, as well as new functionalities, such as decision making, data collection, forwarding, and sharing, a real need is emerging for coordinated management of fog-to-cloud (F2C) computing systems. This article introduces a layered F2C architecture, its benefits and strengths, as well as the arising open and research challenges, making the case for the real need for their coordinated management. Our architecture, the illustrative use case presented, and a comparative performance analysis, albeit conceptual, all clearly show the way forward toward a new IoT scenario with a set of existing and unforeseen services provided on highly distributed and dynamic compute, storage, and networking resources, bringing together heterogeneous and commodity edge devices, emerging fogs, as well as conventional clouds.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

The Intersection of Cloud Computing and Smart Cities: An Exploratory Review of Applications and Challenges in Deployment

This research addressed the intersection of cloud computing and smart cities. Cloud computing and smart cities are two areas that are seeing fast expansion and have the potential to transform the manner in which we work and live. Cloud computing facilitates the supply of on-demand computing resources, including storage, networking, and software, via the internet; and smart cities use technology to improve the quality of life for inhabitants and the efficiency of municipal services. According to the findings of the research, cloud computing has the potential to be used in diverse applications within smart cities. Some examples of these applications include smart transportation, smart lighting, smart buildings, smart waste management, smart healthcare, smart parking, and smart citizen services. This study also drew attention to a number of obstacles that need to be overcome before cloud computing may be properly implemented. Concerns around data security and privacy, network and connection, interoperability, dependency on internet access, cost and scalability, and the need for successful cooperation between municipal authorities, technology suppliers, and residents are examples of these problems. The findings of the research indicate that the potential for cloud computing to significantly improve the capabilities of smart cities should not be underestimated, despite the fact that there are considerable obstacles to be addressed. It will be vital for municipal authorities, technology providers, and residents to collaborate to overcome the problems and establish successful methods for adopting cloud computing in smart cities if this promise is going to be realized

Multi-Agent-Based Cloud Architecture of Smart Grid

AbstractPower system is a huge hierarchical controlled network. Large volumes of data are within the system and the requirement of real-time analysis and processing is high. With the smart grid construction, these requirements will be further improved. The emergence of cloud computing provides an effective way to solve these problems low-costly, high efficiently and reliably. This paper analyzes the feasibility of cloud computing for the construction of smart grid, extends cloud computing to cloud-client computing. Through “Energy Hub”, Microgrid is separated into a network of three storeys that match with the conception of cloud-client computing. This paper introduces multi-agent technology to control each node in the system. On these bases, cloud architecture of smart grid is proposed. Finally, an example is given to explain the application of cloud computing in power grid CPS structure

FIT A Fog Computing Device for Speech TeleTreatments

There is an increasing demand for smart fogcomputing gateways as the size of cloud data is growing. This paper presents a Fog computing interface (FIT) for processing clinical speech data. FIT builds upon our previous work on EchoWear, a wearable technology that validated the use of smartwatches for collecting clinical speech data from patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). The fog interface is a low-power embedded system that acts as a smart interface between the smartwatch and the cloud. It collects, stores, and processes the speech data before sending speech features to secure cloud storage. We developed and validated a working prototype of FIT that enabled remote processing of clinical speech data to get speech clinical features such as loudness, short-time energy, zero-crossing rate, and spectral centroid. We used speech data from six patients with PD in their homes for validating FIT. Our results showed the efficacy of FIT as a Fog interface to translate the clinical speech processing chain (CLIP) from a cloud-based backend to a fog-based smart gateway.Comment: 3 pages, 5 figures, 1 table, 2nd IEEE International Conference on Smart Computing SMARTCOMP 2016, Missouri, USA, 201