Edge Computing - From Hype To Reality PDF

EAI/Springer Innovations in Communication and Computing
Fadi Al-Turjman Editor
Edge
Computing
From Hype to Reality
EAI/Springer Innovations in Communication
and Computing
Series editor
Imrich Chlamtac, CreateNet, Trento, Italy
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Fadi Al-Turjman
Editor
Edge Computing
From Hype to Reality
123
Editor
Fadi Al-Turjman
Computer Engineering Department
Antalya Bilim University
Antalya, Turkey
ISSN 2522-8595 ISSN 2522-8609 (electronic)

EAI/Springer Innovations in Communication and Computing
ISBN 978-3-319-99060-6 ISBN 978-3-319-99061-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99061-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018958621
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

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To my great parents, my first lady and my
little one.
Whose affection, pray, and continues
encouragement have made this book and
every beautiful thing in my life realized.
Fadi Al-Turjman
Preface
We are living in an era where the Edge of the Cloud is becoming a global platform
for the computation and interaction between machines and smart objects, in real-
time applications and for many critical tasks.
With the application areas such as smart cities, smart grids, smart cars, smart
eHealth, smart supply chain, and smart homes in the Internet of Things (IoT), we can
consider the Edge computing as a complete package of the smart networked objects.
From this perspective, it is essential to understand the role of Edge computing which
will provide a global backbone for the worldwide information sharing/processing in
the near future.
There is no doubt that introducing such a new phenomenon can come with
potential challenges especially in terms of security and quality of service (QoS).
Therefore, it is essential to consider new enabling technologies such as wireless
sensor networks (WSN), various radio technologies and cellular infrastructures
(e.g., small cells), radio-frequency identification (RFID), and cloud services and
architectures for performance optimization.
The objective of this book is to present a survey of existing techniques and
architectures for Edge computing optimization and improvements with the presence
of IoT systems. The main focus is on practical design aspects that can help in
realizing such a paradigm in practice. The applications of Edge computing in
IoT, evaluation metrics, constraints, and open issues about the addressed topic are
included for discussion as well. This conceptual book, which is unique in the field,
will assist researchers and professionals working in the area of the Cloud to better
assess the proposed Edge paradigms that are already beginning to be a significant
part of the global infrastructure.
Antalya, Turkey Fadi Al-Turjman
vii
Contents
1 The Era of the Personal Cloud: What Does It Mean for Cloud
Providers? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Mohamed Abu Sharkh, Abdallah Shami, and Mohamad Kalil
2 Optimization in Edge Computing and Small-Cell Networks . . . . . . . . . . 17
Jitender Grover and Ram Murthy Garimella
3 A Comprehensive Survey on Architecture for Big Data
Processing in Mobile Edge Computing Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Maninder Jeet Kaur
4 Taxonomy of Edge Computing: Challenges, Opportunities,
and Data Reduction Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Kusumlata Jain and Smaranika Mohapatra
5 Applications of the Internet of Things with the Cloud
Computing Technologies: A Review .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
U. Ram Jagannath, S. Saravanan, and S. Kanimozhi Suguna
6 Software-Defined Internet of Things to Analyze Big Data
in Smart Cities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Sadia Din, Awais Ahmad, Anand Paul, and Gwanggil Jeon
7 Taking Cloud Computing to the Extreme Edge: A Review
of Mist Computing for Smart Cities and Industry 4.0 in Africa . . . . . . 107
Eustace M. Dogo, Abdulazeez Femi Salami, Clinton O. Aigbavboa,
and Thembinkosi Nkonyana
8 IoT and Edge Computing as a Tool for Bowel
Activity Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Umit Deniz Ulusar, Erdinc Turk, Ahmet Sefa Oztas,
Alp Erkan Savli, Guner Ogunc, and Murat Canpolat
ix
x Contents
9 Application of Cloud Computing and Internet of Things

to Improve Supply Chain Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
S. Kanimozhi Suguna and Suresh Nanda Kumar
10 A Conceptual Framework for Security and Privacy in Edge
Computing.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
Bragadeesh S. A. and Umamakeswari Arumugam
Index . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Chapter 1
The Era of the Personal Cloud:
What Does It Mean for Cloud Providers?
Mohamed Abu Sharkh, Abdallah Shami, and Mohamad Kalil
1.1 Introduction
Depending on Cloud technologies for core business activities like collaboration,

business continuity and operation has become a reality for businesses all over
the world. Cloud technology adoption rates are increasing steadily. 78% of US
small businesses will have fully adopted Cloud computing by 2020, more than
doubling the current 37% [18]. The percentage grows to 90% when looking at
large businesses (larger than 1000 employees) [35]. The US small and medium
business (SMB) Cloud computing and services market will grow from 43 billion
dollars in 2015 to 55 billion dollars in 2016 [18]. This trend is consistent in Europe
as well. The percentages of small, medium, and large businesses adopting Cloud
technologies in the UK are 46%, 63%, and 82%, respectively. In Germany, the
percentages are 50%, 65%, and 86%. This has been the case for sometime. A
game changer in the last few years is the dramatic increase in the personal use of
Cloud services, so much so that Gartner has dubbed the next era as the era of the
personal Cloud [22]. This means that the usage trend for individuals has moved from
depending on the personal computer into depending heavily on personal Clouds.
This is by no means a small or ignorable feat compared to enterprise businesses. It
is large market chunk that demands attention from Cloud providers. This direction
M. Abu Sharkh ()

Digital Media Software Engineering, Ferris State University, Grand Rapids, MI, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
A. Shami
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Western University, London, ON, Canada
M. Kalil
IBM Analytics, IBM Canada, Markham, ON, Canada
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 1

F. Al-Turjman (ed.), Edge Computing, EAI/Springer Innovations in
Communication and Computing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99061-3_1
2 M. Abu Sharkh et al.
covers a transfer away from the full range of personal computing usage patterns
to a different set of patterns using Cloud services. For example, Gartner estimated
that consumers’ storage will grow from around 500 gigabytes (2011 estimate) to 3.3
terabytes by 2016. A third of these loads is already in the Cloud [22].
As for network loads, 2014 was the first year a majority of the world data
workloads were on the Cloud (51% to 49% for data centers). Cisco expected the
growth of this number to be 63% in 2017. Moreover, the estimate for network
traffic was 69% for Cloud networking compared with 31% with regular data centers.
Mobile date traffic is a slice that is affected largely as well [16]. Cloud mobile data
traffic is projected to grow from 81% in 2014 to 90% in 2019.
Research firm IDC estimates that nearly one third of the worldwide enterprise
application market will be SaaS-based by 2018, driving annual SaaS revenue to
$50.8B, from 22.6B in 2013 [17]. According to a survey reported in [34], the average
enterprise uses 1,427 distinct Cloud services with the average employee actively
using 36 Cloud services at work. Gartner estimated the worldwide public Cloud
services market at $209.2B and predicted this will pass the $250B barrier soon [23].
The Internet of Things offerings expand the horizons of data sources for a certain
Cloud-based service, but it also jumps to a new dimension in terms of the data
filtering and preprocessing required of the same service to get to the core value
returning requests. The sheer volume of the connected devices along with the
connection speed and user expectations for response from the server put a stress
both on the network and on back end Cloud data center to perform up to the required
level. This poses a challenge to Cloud service designers regarding how to optimize
this process. You cannot expect every single data packet from 8.4B heterogeneous
IoT devices (Gartner’s estimate of the number of devices deployed around the world
in 2017) to be informative or even relevant.
Personal Cloud spread contributed to the Cloud market size multiplication. The
consumer’s interest combined with technological advancements contributed to these
leaps in consumption. Public Clouds – which are where most of the personal Cloud
loads reside – are the most affected with this growth. Public Cloud vendor revenue
grew from 26 billion dollars in 2012 to a projected 154 billion in 2017 [45].
Software as a service represented 67% of this as of 2015. Traditional IT
infrastructure is definitely losing ground to Cloud solutions. The market share
percentages moved swiftly from 72%, 17%, and 11% for traditional IT, public
Clouds, and private Clouds, respectively, in 2011 to 53%, 29%, and 5% in 2017 [43].
Personal work loads are going in a clear direction: up to the Clouds.
In this work, we endeavor to investigate the potential impact the dawn of this new
era will have on Cloud providers. The purpose is to offer a solid perspective into
what changes are expected in the environment, technical requirements and usage
trends. This, in turn, would aid in forming a vision for the directions providers need
to go into their policies and algorithm planning.
In Sect. 1.2, we investigate the impacts on the area of resource allocation in a
Cloud data center. This covers multiple venues including the request distribution
effects, impacts on financial investment in Cloud resources, the optimality of the
pricing plans, and energy efficiency considerations in light of the personal Cloud
1 The Era of the Personal Cloud: What Does It Mean for Cloud Providers? 3
conditions. Section 1.3 offers a detailed discussion on Cloud client demand pattern
prediction methods.
In Sect. 1.4, we introduce the impacts and the intersection points with another
dominating technology trend, which is the Internet of Things. This section covers
the challenges expected from numerous nodes representing the clients in that
scenario. The cause and effect of the diversity and volume of these requests is probed
into.
Section 1.5 strives to envision any tangible effects on Cloud brokering services.
Finally, venues for future improvement are explored in Sect. 1.6.
1.2 Resource Allocation in the Cloud: Personal vs. Corporate

Clients
1.2.1 X Requests vs. One Really Large One
For a Cloud provider, the resource allocation is in the core of the Cloud management
process. Resource utilization and long-term planning can be really lucrative in
terms of performance and financial rewards. This is generally easier to handle with
enterprise clients. Despite Cloud computing having the major advantage of dynamic
scaling and pay as you go as a benefit for clients, it is noticeable that precise
prediction of the resource scale the client will demand would be rewarding for the
client. For a large enterprise, the favorable scenario would be to rent an amount
of Cloud resources as close as possible to the amount they practically require on
a long-term contract with the ability to scale up or out just in case demand surges
happen. As depicted in detail later, dynamic scaling is a business-enhancing feature,
but it being the norm does not make sense cost-wise.
A look at some of the public Cloud price offerings confirms this idea. It is a
practical and realistic assumption to expect enterprise clients to have the expected
average load and maximum load estimates calculated and clear. However, with
clients using personal Clouds or services with higher exposure to individuals using
their own devices, this can get much trickier. For example, if we look at pricing
patterns for VM instance rental for Amazon AWS and if we focus on infrastructure
as a service since it often is the clearest example of the resource outsourcing and
economies of scale, some interesting insights can be drawn [7].
Amazon’s three charging models are on-demand, which, as the name suggests,
basically reflects a pay-as-you-go system. Understandably, instances under this
usage condition tend to be of higher price and priced per hour. Next is the reserved
instances which provide the clients with guaranteed capacity for a fixed term. These
are offered with (no upfront, partial upfront, and all upfront) payment options and
on a 1-year or 3-year terms. Finally, Amazon offers the clients the opportunity to bid
for the remaining unrented capacities in a specific Clouddata center. To buy these
instances – called spot instances – clients determine their demands and put a bid in
0.3000
3Yr-All-Upfront-Resevred
0.2500
On Demand
Spot
0.2000
0.1500
0.1000
0.0500
0.0000
Fig. 1.1 A comparison of Cloud service prices per hour for a select set of instances offered by
Amazon under different charging modes [7]
the form of the price they are willing to pay, and then the instances are sold subject
to the available capacity in a data center.
Figure 1.1 shows a comparison of the prices of 4 pricing options (3-year reserved,
1 year reserved, on-demand, and spot instances based on the latest accepted bids) as
of Feb 2016 for several instance types. We chose to use Linux-based instances for
this comparison (since the environment change affects the price per hour). Each
instance type reflects a different resource configuration. This figure along with
Fig. 1.2 – which shows the percentage of the on-demand instance price for the other
three pricing methods – illustrates the significance of the usage condition to the
client. As for the provider side, a look at the revenue that can be generated from a
specific load for a Cloud with predetermined capacity can really help us achieve and
form a trend here.
The variables in play here are the prices per hour for each usage condition. α
is defined to be the price per hour for 3-year reserved instances. β represents the
price per hour for 1-year reserved instances. γ represents the price per hour for
the on-demand instances. δ represents the price per hour for the instances sold in
the spot mode based on the latest spot instance price. X represents the number of
3-year reserved instances. Y represents the number of 1-year reserved instances.
Z represents the number of on-demand instances. Finally, W is the number of
instances sold in spot mode in a specific hour. The hourly revenue generated from a
specific can be calculated as follows.
REVh = α × Xh + β × Yh − γ × Zh + δ × Wh (1.1)
In Fig. 1.3, the expected revenue for a Cloud provider from a specific data center
is shown. The data center used is assumed to have a capacity of 1000 VM instances.
70
60
50
40
30
20
Spot
10
Fig. 1.2 A comparison of Cloud service prices per hour relative to the on-demand pay-as-you-go
charging model for a select set of instances offered by Amazon [7]
14.0000
12.0000
10.0000
3Yr-All-Upfront-
8.0000 Resevred
1Yr-All-Upfront-
6.0000
Resevred
4.0000 on demand
2.0000
0.0000
Fig. 1.3 The total revenue achieved by a Cloud of 1000 VM instance capacity under different
client demands
The figure represents the expected revenue for a Cloud provider when different
types of clients rent instances of the t2.micro type. For each client, revenue is
calculated when the demand ranges from 1000 (full Cloud capacity) until 0. In
the case of the reserved usage conditions (3 year and 1 year), the original contract
is assumed to be 800 instances with any increase rented by the client on an on-
demand condition. This figure tells us that with the scattered on-demand pattern
which best describes the personal Cloud requests, Cloud providers end up having to
auction the remaining capacity as spot instances. This could make it harder for the
provider to reach the revenue level achieved when clients use reserved mode. In the
figure, the utilization level where the direction/trend changes is (according to this
scenario of posted prices) the point where 45% of the data center requests being on-
demand. Otherwise, it is evidently better for the provider to reserve the data center
resource for the less expensive yet more stable reserved usage condition clients.
These are mostly enterprises. This all add extra emphasis on the Cloud providers
traffic prediction and resource reservation policies in the case of heavy personal
demand. More focus on this area would aid the providers in mitigating the effect
of other factors impacting the pricing/commercial side (competitors, client global
demand, saturation levels, government-related factors in terms of regulation and
taxation).
1.2.2 Energy Efficiency Ramifications
Power consumption in Cloud data centers is a pressing issue for Cloud providers.
Power costs represent between 25% and 40% of the operational expenses of a
data center [47]. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NDRC) published a
data center efficiency assessment in Aug 2014 as an attempt to depict the scale
of data centers the world over [36]. The study mentions that US data centers are
on track to consume roughly 140 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually by
2020, equivalent to the output of 50 large power plants (each with 500 megawatts
capacity). If worldwide data centers were a country, they would be the globe’s
12th largest consumer of electricity. Another fact here is their assessment of
energy efficiency. Their analysis finds that up to 30% of servers are obsolete or
not needed and that other machines are grossly underutilized. Persistent issues
obscuring efficiency include: peak provisioning, failure to power down unused
servers, and competing priorities, keeping costs low and maintaining high levels
of security, reliability, and uptime for their clients. These are some of the main
factors cited that affect power efficiency and stand in the way of a staggering 40%
potential improvement in power consumption. These factors are all largely affected
by data center load planning and management. An efficient scheduling energy-aware
algorithm would exploit the benefits that come from virtualization technologies,
optimal demand-driven provisioning, and efficient load modeling.
In the era of personal Cloud, different energy efficiency algorithms will have
added level of complexity to tackle [2, 13, 15]. As discussed in detail in [1], energy
efficiency algorithms take one of three routes: server consolidation [10, 24, 42]
and switching off of idle server, dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS)
of servers with low loads [33], and algorithms dependent on dynamic prediction
[29]. Each of those is affected by the type of load and client distribution change
that personal Cloud client request imposes. With consolidation-based solutions,
a more heterogeneous set of instances is favorable to counter challenges with
network bottlenecks and fault tolerance. DVFS methods could achieve more savings
Personal Cloud Demand Prediction
Request Sources Request Application type Request Volume
Client Effects on Resource

Redundancy Specification
Device Network Lifetime/
Bottleneck Duration
Location Effects on Frequency/
Dependency Distribution
Pricing policies Energy Efficiency policies High availability policies
Fig. 1.4 Personal Cloud demand prediction
by exploiting the personal Cloud instances with low activity. Moreover, energy
efficiency methods based on future request prediction could benefit from studying
personal Cloud load distribution and sizes.
Figure 1.4 summarizes the discussion on personal Cloud client behavior pre-
diction. The upper layer shows the defining elements of the client requests. This
includes knowledge about request source in terms of which client, from which
device, and from which location. These identifiers would affect the quality of service
conditions and can be used to offer customized and personalized service to clients.
Next, the application the clients access or use is central to the client behavior
modeling. The application type will affect VM instance on redundancy, network
bottlenecks and network resource configuration, and on application dependencies.
Such factors need to be taken into consideration. The volume of the requests is
the third aspect of this triangle. The request volume includes distributions of the
resource specification, lifetime or duration of each request, and the probabilistic
distribution that better represents arrival rate of requests. Considering the mentioned
aspects is critical for Cloud providers when planning the resource allocation
policies, energy efficiency policies, high availability policies, and service-pricing
policies.
1.3 Request Pattern Prediction
As previously discussed, demand prediction gains elevated criticality in the case of

personal Cloud clients. This fact motivated multiple efforts to delve deep into that
challenge [3, 5, 12, 28].
In [37], a Cloud workload management framework is introduced which exploits
demand forecast, predictive resource allocation, and quality assurance, as well as
resource pricing as interdependent components. This framework performs trace
analysis of a production video-on-demand (VoD) system. The prediction technique
is based on forming a time series to predict video bandwidth demand from online
monitoring and determine bandwidth reservations from multiple data centers. An
optimization model and study based on game theory is offered to aid in the pricing
process.
In [8], the authors propose a Cloud client prediction model evaluated using
machine learning techniques including support vector machines (SVM), neural
networks (NN), and linear regression (LR). The model covers metrics including
response time and throughput. Results and subsequent analysis from the experi-
mentation carried out on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) show that support
vector machine provides the best prediction results for random workload traffic
pattern.
In [21], a model based on stepwise nonnegative least squares regression is used
to predict the demand for a specific Cloud service (viz., HP ePrint service).
A different approach is offered in [14] which is to predict workloads based on
identifying similar past occurrences of the current short-term workload history. This
process uses a string matching technique. It is based on the assumption that the
usage of a Cloud client can sometimes have a repetitive behavior. “Current usage
patterns of online services have a probability of having already occurred in the past
in a very similar” form[14]. Therefore, it can be used to infer what the future system
usage will be for a Cloud client.
Another leading effort can be found in [32]. An investigation of repeatable
workload patterns by exploring cross-VM workload correlations coming from
application dependency is introduced. A co-clustering is then proposed, based on
sample data time series, a co-clustering technique to determine which VMs exhibit
high frequency of correlations and the times these are exhibited. This is used
in a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) that defines periodical correlations used for
workload patterns prediction. Workload behavior prediction will remain an active
and ever-growing topic for Cloud providers especially in light of the era of the
personal Cloud.
1.4 Internet of Things: The Undiscriminating Swarm

of Requests
1.4.1 IoT and Personal Cloud: How Personal Things

Are Connected
To show how central Internet of Things implementation tiers are to the personal
Cloud, it is enough to look at the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) definition of IoT
in RFC 7452.33 “Architectural Considerations in Smart Object Networking”: “The
term ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) denotes a trend where a large number of embedded
devices employ communication services offered by the Internet protocols. Many of
these devices, often called ‘smart objects’, are not directly operated by humans, but
exist as components in buildings or vehicles, or are spread out in the environment.”
These smart objects will represent the elements of the personal Cloud. The
personal Cloud of a specific user contains not only the traditional computa-
tion/communication devices (laptop, tablet, mobile phone), but it will be mostly
represented by other smart objects repressing other devices owned by the client like
the ones mentioned in the definition. This would range from fridges alerting clients
when grocery items are missing to sensors used to get insights on traffic to nodes
used in farms.
To further understand how this works, we look at the communication models
envisioned for the IoT and personal Cloud devices.
Devices can communicate in a device-to-device fashion where devices exchange
data between each other either through the Internet or other IP networks or through
direct connections using Bluetooth or ZigBee protocols, for example. Another type
of communication is device to Cloud [4, 9, 20, 31, 39, 50, 51].
“In a device-to-Cloud communication model, the IoT device connects directly
to an Internet Cloud service like an application service provider to exchange data
and control message traffic”[27]. This happens mostly through Wi-Fi connections.
The third model is device-to-gateway model. In the device-to-gateway model, the
IoT device connects through an application layer gateway service in order to reach
a Cloud service.
1.4.2 Inherent IoT Issues in the Era of Personal Cloud
1.4.2.1 Volume
The sheer numbers of the IoT devices take the probability of risk to new levels.
This volume also means that a specific security vulnerability in one device will be
magnified as the tendency is to build and use high numbers of identical devices. A
poor design for a device or a vulnerability in a communication protocol could have
magnified impacts on the Cloud this device is dealing with.
The high volume of small cheap numerous devices means the manufacturers find
it harder to break even if they used more sophisticated processors or chips with more
memory. This limits the security functionalities/capabilities of a single thing.
1.4.2.2 Interconnectivity
The number of interconnections between things and connections to the Cloud is

certainly reaching a new level. IBM expected in [26] that 18.6 billion network
connections will exist in 2016. This number along with the things’ ability to
establish independent and dynamic connections with other devices on their own
raises the bar for security tools. It is correct that some of these connections can be
neglected or just turned off when necessary, but this is not always the situation. With
the increasing dependency, things collecting weather of traffic data cannot be treated
the same way we treat household things.
1.4.2.3 The Black Box Syndrome
“Researchers at the French technology institute Eurecom downloaded some 32,000

firmware images from potential IoT device manufacturers and discovered 38
vulnerabilities across 123 products including poor encryption and back doors
that could allow unauthorized access”[40]. The cost of manufacturing some of
the sensors and other devices constructing the Internet of Things imposes some
restrictions in terms of the ability to update or improve these devices. In addition,
the implementation visibility of such devices could be close to none.“This creates
a security vulnerability when a user believes an IoT device is performing certain
functions, when in reality it might be performing unwanted functions or collecting
more data than the user intends.”
1.4.2.4 Privacy Considerations and Legal Issues
The challenge here is the privacy of data collected by IoT devices is susceptible
for many reasons. First, the clients agreeing to data being collected is not as
straightforward as it was previously. The nature and frequency of data collected
or sent by the thing makes it harder for the client to get involved. Second, some IoT
devices do not commend an interface to configure privacy settings. Moreover, the
data collection and processing can always affect people and devices not involved
with the IoT ownership. Examples are people sharing the same geographic location
temporarily or sharing the same computing resources. Additional privacy protection
measures are required for every carrier of smart devices because as the time goes on
there is more of an assumption that each piece of data that can be collected will be
collected by some device around you [27, 49].
1.4.3 The Cloud-Friendly Device Market as a Driver

of the Personal Cloud
The notebook PC vs. tablet shipment and forecast report in [44] reveals a prime
driver behind the personal Cloud. The notebook PC share decreased from 75%
vs. 25% in 2011 to 27% vs. 73% for the tablet PC in 2015. Substantial changes
are happening. This does not account smartphones which at a fraction of the PC
weight are offering very similar video, audio, and processing capabilities to PCs
a few years ago. Alcatel-Lucent note the major factors affecting the evolution of
the mobile market and the close affiliation with the Cloud [6]. One factor cited by
Alcatel is the users’ aspiration to operate personal Clouds. This was paired with
the increasing demand for Wi-Fi and increasing demand for video conversation in
business environments.
1.5 Cloud Brokering Services
Another challenge Cloud providers need to be aware of is the general trend of

depending on Cloud service brokers (CSBs) [48]. CSBs serve as the middle layer
between Cloud clients and providers. CSBs are divided into two types or flavors:
technical CSBs and business ones. Technical CSBs provide an automation, manage-
ment, or governance fabric underneath which sit one or more Cloud infrastructure
products. Business CSBs, on the other hand, are primarily involved with providing
a trading interface between Cloud vendors and customers [48].
This does not only apply to enterprises. CSBs can act as Cloud service providers
to the public as well. Many brokers are prominent Cloud providers (even in the list
of 100 biggest Cloud service providers) including Appirio, BlueWolf, CloudMore,
Cloud Nation, Clouditalia, Cloud Sherpas, and Comcast Upware. The roles a CSB
can provide to personal Cloud clients in the future can range from intermediary roles
like identity or access management capabilities to aggregation of multiple service
to insure portability and interoperability in addition to typical service like offering
multiple pricing and resource configuration option for personal Cloud clients to
choose from.
This is an area that needs attention from Cloud providers. This is evidenced by
the overall global Cloud brokerage market growth from $1.57 billion in 2013 to
$10.5 billion by 2018 [25, 30, 46]. CSB service evolution will support seamless
migration between Clouds (and providers) and will limit data lock-in [11, 19]. The
Cloud providers’ response to this development will be a deciding factor if this CSB-
supported client ability will be a threat or an opportunity.
1.6 Conclusions and Avenues for Future Improvement
The key take away from the chapter is that there is a wide space for improvement
for such a new paradigm and for how Cloud providers handle it. With the amount of
PC and tablet shipments in the world almost doubling from 2008 to 2015 reaching
545 million devices in 2015, there is definitely a space for growth [38].
The report in [45] gives us an insight into this potential. The report surveys the
population’s usage/interest in using public services through a Cloud medium. The
interest is really high for countries still migrating to the Cloud including India (81%
of the sampled population either using government service or interested in using
them), UAE (80%), and Brazil (79%). However, these numbers are significantly
lower for the UK, the USA, and Germany (59%, 55%, and 53%, respectively). There
is some way for the personal Cloud transformation to be complete in the minds
of the individual users. Providers need to investigate the areas where performance
or service offerings cause that gap in expectation and address these issues. One
attempt at figuring this out is in [43]. Within the set of users using the Cloud storage
services in the UK in 2014, 55% faced problems while storing or sharing files.
These problems included slow speed of access or use, technical server problems,
incompatibility and portability problem between devices or file formats, vendor
lock-in, privacy challenges with disclosure of data to third party, or unauthorized use
of information by service provider. The last one is an issue for the public with doubts
over agreements and government usage/ownership of data very much in the public’s
mind. Guarantees for data access and movement within the Cloud are expected by
the client. This is really consistent with the results from [41] which alluded that ease
of accessing files from several devices or locations was a main reason for using the
Cloud. “Among the reasons for using Cloud services, three in five users of Internet
storage space identified the possibility to use files from several devices or locations
and to share files with other persons easily (59%). Furthermore, over half of users
gave protection against data loss as a reason for using the Cloud (55%). Users also
valued having a larger memory space (44%) and being able to access large libraries
of music, films, or TV programs (22%).”
Concerns about security and privacy remain a main barrier to the use of Cloud
services.
For the cases where people were aware of Cloud services but chose not to use
them, “44% cited security or privacy concerns as a reason for not making use of such
services, 28% mentioned concerns about the reliability of service providers and 22%
cited a lack of skills” [41]. These insights draw a path for Cloud providers in order
to increase the personal Cloud penetration and achieve higher client satisfaction.
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Chapter 2
Optimization in Edge Computing
and Small-Cell Networks
Jitender Grover and Ram Murthy Garimella
2.1 Introduction
2.1.1 Edge Computing
Distributed computing paradigms like Cluster Computing and Grid Computing

were innovated to meet the computing need arising in various applications. The
culmination of such efforts is a Cloud Computing paradigm enabled by data centers,
and distributed across the world and the Internet. It is commercially very successful.
Presently, IoT devices are connected to the Cloud through some (wired/wireless)
communication medium. IoT-Cloud infrastructure is shown in Fig. 2.1. Sensed
data reaches to the Cloud via core Internet for processing. This leads to high
communication cost (in terms of time delay), which can be catastrophic for many
hard real-time delay-sensitive applications such as health monitoring, automated
vehicles, manufacturing systems/assembly lines, video surveillance, etc. (Fig. 2.2).
It was realized that in the context of technologies like IoT and CPS, the delay
involved in processing data using Cloud resources will be high. It is necessary
to perform computing, communication/networking, and control (actuation) locally,
leading to the idea of Edge Computing [1]. Variations of Edge Computing led
to paradigms such as Fog/Mist/Dew computing as shown in Fig. 2.3. It can be
considered as a hierarchical Cloud where Dew has least latency and least processing
power and Cloud has the highest latency and highest processing power.
J. Grover () · R. M. Garimella

Signal Processing and Communication Research Center (SPCRC), International Institute
of Information Technology, Hyderabad, Telangana, India
e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]

18 J. Grover and R. M. Garimella
Fig. 2.1 IoT-Cloud infrastructure
Fig. 2.2 Time sensitivity in real-time vs non-real-time systems
Edge Computing potentially addresses issues like latency concerns, limited

processing/storage capabilities of devices/things, battery life, network bandwidth
constraints, security and privacy concerns, etc.
Edge computing [2] paradigm enables allocation of computing resources to the
tasks generated by IoT applications. Some tasks are highly delay constrained. Also,
the cost of Edge Computing infrastructure needs to be minimized [3]. Since the
connectivity structure of Edge Computing infrastructure is under the control of
the user, the grid-based architecture provides a good approximation. Thus, we are
naturally led to an interesting joint optimization problem with cost, delay, etc. as the
objective functions.
2 Optimization in Edge Computing and Small-Cell Networks 19
Fig. 2.3 Cloud hierarchy
2.1.2 Edge Communication
It is most likely that the edge wireless network is based on micro/pico/femto

cell infrastructure (Fig. 2.4). A multi-tier communication network usually overlays
multiple tiers of cells and potentially shares a common spectrum. A macro-cell is
usually a traditional cell tower which covers 15–30 kms, but small cells cover a
smaller area with respect to macro-cell. A micro-cell covers 1–2 kms. They can
be used temporarily during the large events or in heavy rush areas for additional
coverage. Pico-cell can manage up to 100 users and covers 250 m. They are mostly
installed indoor and used to improve the coverage in an office or shopping area.
Femto-cells are often self-installed and can manage a few users only. Small cells
increase frequency reuse multiple times and enable cellular networks to manage
high number of IoT devices on the edge. They can be installed at homes, offices,
etc. to provide seamless connectivity to all the available IoT devices.
In most interesting Edge Computing applications (such as in IoT), the packet
traffic on the network has predictable patterns. Hence dynamic channel allocation
based on historical traffic data ensures optimal utilization of available channels.
It is natural to employ cognitive radio technology to increase the spectrum
utilization (as the demand for channels is sporadic by devices). To facilitate
cognition, a wideband spectrum sensing needs to be done in a time-optimal manner.
Thus, we are led to a design of optimal cellular, cognitive radio network (femto/pico
cell).
Fig. 2.4 Multi-tier

communication networks
2.1.3 Edge Application
From the above discussion, the need for Edge Computing and Edge Communication
is clearly evident. We now focus our attention on one application as an example
which highlights finer requirements of the Edge Computing infrastructure.
Hospital is one of the applications which requires Edge Computing infrastructure
to deal with delay-sensitive patient monitoring system. It should be kept in mind
that critically ill patients effectively require real-time processing of the diagnostic
data and real-time intervention by the doctor. Some regular patients generate
diagnostic data that leads to predictable demands of edge resources (computa-
tion/communication). But some type of data generated by patients in unpredictable.
Hence, the Edge Computing paradigm leads to flexibility in provisioning edge
resources based on demand.
In most hospitals, various type of data (e.g., diagnostic data) with varied
processing time constraints are generated. For instance, the data has features of Big
Data. On the other hand, storage of medical records of past and present patients
needs to be done. The processing of such medical records to mine interesting
patterns could be done using Cloud Computing resources. Thus, Cloud Computing
and Edge Computing complement each other. Effectively real-time/non-real-time
processing of patient data effectively aids medical diagnosis.
The Edge Computing paradigm effectively has the following characteristics
needed by various applications.
• Upgradability of computing/communication, control resources on demand.

• QoS provisioning for various applications.
• Security/privacy of data processed, etc.
It is crystal clear that there is a need for Edge Computing paradigms (such as
Fog, Mist, Dew computing). The resources at the edge are mainly computational
resources (e.g., multi-core processor-based systems), communication/networking
resources, and control/actuation resources. These resources must be shared in an
optimal manner to meet the QoS constraints of applications.
In this chapter, we formulate and solve interesting optimization problems arising
in the design of Edge Computing and Edge Communication network suitable for
many applications. The motivation behind Edge Computing Optimization problem
is to minimize the cost of edge servers’ deployment, taking location, type, and cost
of servers into consideration. In practical scenario, if an industry tries to provide
Edge Computing solution and wants to decrease the deployment cost, the proposed
optimization solution can be used. Motivation behind small-cell optimization prob-
lem is to allocate channels dynamically to meet the future demands of IoT devices.
The use of micro-cells, pico-cells, and even femto-cells is very much possible in
the near future to provide seamless connectivity to IoT devices. Optimization of
multilevel dynamic channel allocation (DCA) can help ISPs to cover more number
of devices efficiently and provide better performance to the end users.
2.2 Related Work
This section briefly describes the efforts made by the researchers to explain the
need of Edge Computing. Further, the optimization strategies proposed for the edge
servers’ deployment would be discussed in this section. Amin et al. [4] discussed
the participatory Edge Computing for the local community services. They used
and proved that using the local server is better if we have a complex core network
available. They successfully implemented and provided third-party applications on
local servers for the community near to them. Kim et al. [5] worked with IoT devices
to offload their computation on the Cloud. Based on the results, authors found it
better to offload and compute on the Cloud rather than doing computation on the IoT
device itself. Samie et al. [6] described a way of distributed computation offloading
to many remote machines for distributed QoS for IoTs. It suggests to decompose
the problem into small processes among many resources. Dynamic programming
is used for resource allocation, and the whole problem is solved using ILP. Mao
et al. [7] went one step further and offloaded the computation data to the edge server
which is nearer as compared to the Cloud.
By many examples it has been proved by the researchers that even though the
machines on the edge have lesser configuration, still the delay is higher while getting
the computation results from the Cloud. It happens due to the communication
cost. In [8], the author proposed the optimizing solution by formulating it as an
integer nonlinear program for offloading and resource allocation in Mobile Edge
Computing. The author found that due to the hardness of the problem, optimally
solving it for the last scale network is impractical. To solve it efficiently the problem
is divided into resource allocation and task offloading. Resource allocation problem
is further divided into two subproblems which are uplink power allocation and
computing resource allocation. Convex and quasi-convex optimization techniques
are used to solve these problems.
Now, this section briefly describes a few cases where researchers tried to optimize
the edge server deployment strategy. Qiang Fan et al. [9] gave a strategy CAPABLE
to optimize the cost of server deployment and end-to-end delay between client
devices and resources. The simulation results show that the scheme can trade off
between deployment cost and delay. Qin et al. [10] have proposed a software-
defined approach to manage heterogeneous IoT and sensor devices. This is done
via providing the best matching resource for different classes of IoT devices.
Authors have utilized a reflective middleware with a layered IoT SDN controller for
managing various IoT applications. It is the extension of multi-network information
architecture (MINA). Farah Slim et al. [11] proposes a mechanism related to the
multidimensional Cloud. It gives an analytical model for blocking analysis. It also
tried to find out the best strategy for distributed edge placement. Further, a strategy
is devised for resource allocation and capacity planning on the edge network. So
authors tried to optimize the limited resources available at the edge network.
For achieving energy efficiency after taking feedback latency into account,
mobile units demand for a common/different Cloud server for processing [12]. The
proposed algorithm gives a good performance for IoT with multi-small-cell Edge
Computing and MIMO. The problem is formulated as the minimization problem
but doesn’t use learning methods to optimize the device-edge combinations. The
proposed framework also works for radio access point implemented in distributed
and parallel manner with limited signaling to the Cloud. It is compared with disjoint
optimization algorithm and shows better results. In IoT-Edge computing scenario, it
is very much necessary to learn the best combinations over the period of time.
This section covers some of the related proposed solutions, but it is very clear that
very few researchers are focusing on methods for optimizing the allocation of edge
computation and communication resource to the IoT devices for their applications.
Further in the chapter, we have shown how Integer Linear Programming can be used
for optimal allocation of edge resources.
2.3 Edge Computing Architecture: Integer Linear

Programming Formulation
Consider devices/things which are locally distributed in space with limited local
computation/memory resources (e.g., nodes in the wireless sensor network). They
require high-end Edge Computing platforms. Also, it is necessary to be able to
schedule the computing tasks onto a relatively high-end Edge Computing server.
The goal is to minimize the cost as well as the delay in processing the tasks required
by local devices/things. We now provide the detailed modeling assumptions.
• There are two types {T ypeA, T ypeB} of Edge Computing devices with costs
{CA , CB } (model can easily be generalized to the finite number of types of high-
end computing devices).
• The devices/things are distributed in a rectangular grid (model can be generalized
to an arbitrary graph connectivity of devices)
The objective is to minimize the total cost of high-end computing platforms
(required to process the “delay sensitive” tasks submitted by the devices/things)
while at the same time ensuring that the things distributed on the rectangular
grid are able to schedule their tasks onto a certain minimum number of high-end
Edge Computing platforms. We now formulate the optimization problem as a {0, 1}
(binary/integer) linear programming problem.
Let the variable associated with placement of high-end Edge Computing plat-
forms on the rectangular grid be {aij , bij where 0 ≤ i ≤ M, 0 ≤ j ≤ N}, i.e.:
aij = 1; if Type A computer is placed at (i, j)

location on the rectangular grid (2.1)
= 0; otherwise
bij = 1; if Type B computer is placed at (i, j)

location on rectangular grid (2.2)
= 0; otherwise
Let the grid points on the rectangular grid (where devices/things and edge
computers are located), i.e., (M)(N) points, be divided into mutually disjoint sets
{Dγ : 1 ≤ γ ≤ L}, i.e., those sets constitute a set partition of all points on the
rectangular grid. The constraints are that points in each set Dγ (for all j) are served
by at least “S” high-end Edge Computing platforms. Thus the optimization problem
has a linear objective function

M
N
M
N
CA aij + CB bij (2.3)
i=1 j =1 i=1 j =1
subject to the linear constraints

aij + bij ≥ S, f or 1 ≤ K ≤ L (2.4)
(i,j )∈DK (i,j )∈DK
This integer ({0, 1}) linear programming problem is solved using well-known
techniques. Efficient algorithms exist for solving the problem.
An alternate formulation requires that every set Dδ (in the set partition of (M)(N)
grid points) is covered by at least S1 , type A computers and by at least S2 , type B
computers. Thus, the constraints in the above linear programming problem (Eq. 2.4)
get modified in the following manner:

aij ≥ S1 ;
(i,j )∈DK for 1 ≤ K ≤ L (2.5)
(i,j )∈DK bij ≥ S2 ;
We now discuss the high-end Edge Computing allocation scheme for different
IoT applications.
2.4 Optimized Resource Allocation at Edge
After the deployment of the edge servers, next issue that is required to be addressed
is allocation of different types of edge servers to different types of applications
according to their requirements. There can be many types of tasks taken care of
by the edge servers like image classification, audio/video classification, sensed data
fusion, data analytics, mathematical calculations for output generation, etc. These
tasks can be related to IoT applications such as healthcare, environment monitoring,
urban security, smart water/electricity management system, wearable, automated
transportation, smart surveillance, etc.
Now considering that there are two or more types of edge servers (high and low
cost) available on the edge, allocation of appropriate server to different applications
is necessary to complete them in the best possible ways. This can be done by
allocating cost A servers to one type of tasks and cost B servers to other type of
tasks and so on (depending upon the type of servers available). The division of tasks
can be majorly dependent upon the following:
• strict delay requirements of the task
• reliability requirement
• frequency of requests generated by an application and some other negligible
factors.
For example, image classification, smart surveillance, automated transportation
system, etc. related tasks should be assigned to an edge server with more powerful
resources, near to the source to reduce delay, with less probability to failure, and able
to manage frequent continuous requests. On the other hand, tasks like mathematical
calculations, function-based outputs, etc. can be given to the low-cost edge servers.
In the first case, delay more than threshold or failure in response can be catastrophic.
Based on this, optimization function can be updated with more constraints.
Resources loT Nodes

t11
Maximum Allowed Requests

a1 1 1 b1
Expected Requests
P1
t12
Failure Probabilities
P2 a2 2 2 b2
P3 a3 3 3 b3
Pm am tmn bn
m n
Processing
Delav
Fig. 2.5 Resource allocation problem
As shown in Fig. 2.5:

• The maximum capacity of m edge servers is represented by the vector
[a1 , a2 , . . . , am ]
• Probability of Failure of these systems is shown by the vector [p1 , p2 , . . . , pm ]
• The expected number of requests from n IoT nodes is displayed as vector
[b1 , b2 , . . . , bn ]
• A matrix [tij ] ∀ i = 1, 2, . . . , m & j = 1, 2, . . . , n is used to map IoT nodes to
edge servers as resources
Now, a dual-objective resource allocation optimization problem has been formed
as per Fig. 2.5. Considering cost-effective deployment of edge servers and allocation
of servers to the IoT devices in an appropriate way, Eq. (2.3) is not good enough.
If xij be the number of allocated requests to a service proving node i from an IoT
node j , multi-objective optimization problem is formulated as the following:

n
minimize tij xij ∀ 1 ≤ i ≤ m
j =1
(2.6)
and
n
j=1 xij
minimize π m
i=1 pi
subject to constraints

n
xij ≤ ai ∀ i = 1, 2, . . . , m (2.7)
j =1

m
xij = bi ∀ j = 1, 2, . . . , n (2.8)
i=1
xij ≥ 0 ∀ i = 1, 2, . . . , m&j = 1, 2, . . . , n (2.9)
Equation (2.6) is the updated objective function for resource allocation. This
multi-objective function is trying to minimize the cost of deployment, total time
taken for the processing of all the available requests, and the failure probability
associated with all the edge servers. Equation (2.7) keeps a check on the number
of requests to be sent to a server that should not exceed its capacity. Equation (2.8)
divides the load from an IoT node to edge servers. Equation (2.9) puts a lower bound
on the allocations. The following condition must be satisfied to achieve feasible
solution:

m
n
ai >= bj (2.10)
i=1 j =1
In case of not meeting the condition given in Eq. (2.10), more edge servers are
required to be added to satisfy the demand. The edge server can transfer the requests
to other neighbor edge servers as well in that situation. In worst scenario, if no such
servers are available, then the request can be transferred to Cloud as well.
2.5 Optimal Edge Computing Communication Network:

Integer Linear Programming
It is expected that small cells (pico/femto), enabling efficient frequency reuse, will
be the important innovation in the deployment of the 5G cellular network. We
consider the case where the wireless communication network providing connectivity
between devices/things at the edge is infrastructure based.
The goal is to make efficient utilization of channels available in pico/femto cell.
Thus, we are naturally led to dynamic channel allocation based on historical traffic
data (at the edge) in adjacent small cells. Further, we propose dynamic spectrum
access based on time-optimal spectrum sensing (using CR approach). We formulate
these approaches as optimization problems. We reason below that these are two
related optimization problems. In [13], the time-optimal spectrum sensing problem
was formulated and solved. We utilize the solution for efficient spectrum sensing in
small cells. We now formulate and solve the dynamic channel allocation problem in
adjacent small cells and propose a solution.
Let there be M adjacent cells. Also, let the historical traffic (on some time unit
example hour) in the spectrum bands in those cells be {n1 , n2 , n3 , . . . , nM }. We
normalize ni s to arrive at the probability mass function, i.e.:
ni
pi = M ; for 1 ≤ i ≤ M (2.11)
j =1 nj
IDEA: In those bands where “pi ” is small, allocate small number of channels,
i.e., ni s. On the contrary if pi is allocated higher number of channels in such a way
that

M
ni .pi = E[Z] (2.12)
i=1
subject to the constraint that

M
ni = L (2.13)
i=1
i.e., average number of channels allocated to a small cell are maximized. It should be
noted that “Z” is the random variable associated with number of channels allocated
per cell.
We reason below that, if there are no constraints imposed on ni s, the problem
becomes trivial.
Problem formulation: Maximize E[Z]
Subject to the constraint that

M
ni = L (2.14)
i=1
where L is the total number of available channels.

For instance, we can order the probabilities in the order
q1 ≤ q2 ≤ . . . ≤ qM (2.15)
• Set nM = L and ni = 0 for i = M. Thus, L is the maximum attainable value

for E[Z]. Thus, we are naturally led to imposing reasonable constraints on ni s
motivated by practical considerations.
• ni s are in A.P., i.e., n1 , n2 = n1 + d, n3 = n1 + 2d, . . . , nM = n1 + (M − 1)d
From the point of view of allocation of channels, these constraints are very
reasonable and implementable.
Now, we solve the above precise optimization problem. We consider the case
where the number of channels allocated per cell are in Arithmetic Progression. Thus,
the constraint leads to
n1 + (n1 + d) + . . . + (n1 + (M − 1)d) = L (2.16)

Since {n1 , d} are integers, we are led to the linear Diophantine equation
2Mn1 + d(M)(M − 1) = 2L (2.17)
Thus, we would like to utilize solutions of the above Eq. (2.17) and solve the
stochastic optimization problem of maximizing E[Z].

We first sort the probabilities, that is, pi s, in increasing order, resulting in
relabeled probabilities qi s, that is:
q1 ≤ q2 ≤ . . . ≤ qM (2.18)
Thus, maximization of E[Z] requires that
n1 ≤
n2 ≤ . . . ≤
nM (2.19)
It can be readily seen that

M
E[Z] =
n1 + (δ)d; where δ = (j − 1)qj (2.20)
j =1
Also, computing variance of Z, we have that

M
V ar[Z] = (α − δ 2 )d 2 ; where α = (j − 1)2 qj (2.21)
j =1
The following theorem provides unique solution to the above optimization problem.
Theorem Assume that {(a1 , d1 ), . . . , (al , dl ), . . . , (ak , dk )} are the set of solutions
of linear Diophantine Eq. (2.17) among the infinitely many solutions, which are
positive real integers. If a1 < . . . < al < . . . < ak , then d1 > . . . > dl > . . . > dk .
In such a case, (a1 , d1 ) is the best solution, which maximizes the expected value
E(Y ).
Proof To prove that (a1 , d1 ) maximizes E(Y ), we need to prove the below
expression
al + δdl ≤ a1 + δd1 for l = 2, 3, . . . , K (2.22)
i.e. al + δdl ≤ a1 + δd1 for l = 2, 3, . . . , K (2.23)
al − a1
i.e. ≤δ for l = 2, 3, . . . , K (2.24)
d1 − dl
Since, (a1 , d1 ) and (al , dl ), both satisfy the linear Diophantine equation (2.17).
Therefore, we can write
(M − 1)M
M × a1 + × d1 = L (2.25)
2
(M − 1)M
M × a1 = L − × d1 (2.26)
2
(M − 1)M
M × al + × dl = L (2.27)
2
(M − 1)M
M × al = L − × dl (2.28)
2
Multiplying Eq. (2.24) by M on both sides, we get
al − a1
M× ≤M ×δ (2.29)
d1 − dl
M × al − M × a1
≤M ×δ (2.30)
(d1 − dl )
(M−1)M (M−1)M
[L − × dl ] − [L − × d1 ]
2 2
≤ M ×δ (2.31)
(d1 − dl )
(M−1)M
× (d1 − dl )
2
≤M ×δ (2.32)
(d1 − dl )
(M − 1)
≤δ (2.33)
2
Substituting the value of δ, we get
(M − 1)
M
≤ (j − 1)pj (2.34)
2
j =1
Therefore, it is enough to prove the above expression in order to prove (a1 , d1 )

is the best solution which maximizes E(Y ).
By the proof of contradiction, it can be proved that the equality in Eq. (2.34)
holds only for uniform distribution, i.e., p1 = p2 = . . . = pM = M1
. Therefore,

M
1
M
(M − 1)
(j − 1)pj = (j − 1) = (2.35)
M 2
j =1 j =1
For any other probability distribution, we get
(M − 1)
M
< (j − 1)pj (2.36)
2
j =1

Proof To prove the minimum value of M j =1 (j − 1)pj occurs only for uniform
distribution, i.e., p1 = p2 = . . . = pM = M 1
, we use the proof of contradiction.
Suppose that the probability masses p1 = q − , p2 = p3 = . . . = pM−1 = q = M1

and pM = q + gives the minimum value of M j =1 (j − 1)pj , where > 0 is a
small positive real
number. Using the given probabilities, we can calculate value of
the expression M j =1 (j − 1)pj as below:

M
M
(j − 1)pj = 0 × (q − ) + (j − 1) × q
j =1 j =1 (2.37)
+ (M − 1) × (q + )

M
M
(j − 1)pj = (j − 1) × q + (M − 1) × (q + )
j =1 j =1

M
= (j − 1) × q + (M − 1) ×
j =1
M (2.38)
1
= × (j − 1) + (M − 1) ×
M
j =1
1 (M − 1)M
= × + (M − 1) ×
M 2
(M − 1)
= + (M − 1) ×
2
Since,
> 0, it contradicts our supposition. Therefore, we can conclude that the
value of M j =1 (j − 1)pj >
(M−1)
2 for any probability distribution and minimum
value occurs for uniform distribution.
2.6 Conclusion
In this book chapter, we have solved the cost-effective edge server placement
problem optimally, considering the location of the edge servers are grid points.
This is solved using two types of edge servers that can easily be generalized to
any number of servers’ type. Efficient allocation of resources is also taken into
consideration, and this issue is also solved using another optimization function.
Along with this, we also solved the issue of optimal spectrum sensing arising in
cellular cognitive radio networks. This book chapter also solves the issue of optimal
dynamic channel allocation problem arising in small cells based on historical traffic
data. In future, cost effective edge placement optimization problem can be solved
based on a graph where the location of the edge servers can be arbitrary.
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Chapter 3
A Comprehensive Survey on Architecture
for Big Data Processing in Mobile Edge
Computing Environments
Maninder Jeet Kaur
3.1 Introduction
Mobile networks have evolved significantly over the past few decades from 2G to
3G and further from 3G to 4G LTE. This growing mobile traffic is driven by con-
sumer smart phones, streaming video messaging, and P2P applications. In addition,
this growth is expected to increase more as businesses extend their processes to
smart mobile devices after the evolution of mobile cloud computing and services
such as m-learning, m-gaming, m-healthcare, m-commerce, m-governance, etc., are
directly accessible from the mobile devices. This also implies that large amount of
data is involved and high network load and growing demand of network bandwidth
as data have to be transmitted and received to and from the mobile devices and
cloud data centers [1]. With existing centralized cloud computing architecture, the
applications are facing harsh challenges. For example, mobile devices connected
to the distant centralized cloud servers try to obtain high computing applications
which enforce additional load both on the radio access networks and on the backhaul
networks and, thus, introducing high latency [2]. As estimated by Cisco, the number
of devices connected to the IoT will be around 50 billion by 2020, and at the same
time, mobile data traffic is predicted to continue doubling each year [3, 4]. However,
the load if this large volume of data which is generated by end users and processed
at cloud data centers leads to certain challenges like stringent latency, capacity
constraints, resource-constrained devices, uninterrupted services with intermittent
connectivity, and enhanced security [5].
There are two emerging paradigms which have been proposed to help overcome
these challenges: (i) cloud-based radio access network (CRAN) that aims at the
M. J. Kaur ()
Department of Engineering, Amity University Dubai, Dubai International Academic City, Dubai,
UAE

34 M. J. Kaur
centralization of base station (BS) functions via virtualization and (ii) mobile
edge computing (MEC) which proposes to empower the network edge [6]. CRAN
brings cloud computing technologies into mobile networks by centralizing baseband
processing units (BBU) of radio access network to ensure highly efficient network
operation and flexible service delivery when handling mobile internet traffic surging
[7]. CRAN uses centralized BBU to do baseband processing, while MEC handles
distributed task offloading by shifting computation capacity from a public cloud to
an edge cloud, which significantly reduces latency. In MEC, network edge devices,
such as base stations (BSs), access points, and routers, are endowed with, albeit
limited, computing and storage capabilities to serve users’ requests as a substitute
of clouds, while significantly reducing the transmission latency as they are placed
in the proximity of end users.
3.2 Mobile Edge Computing: Overview and Framework
The first real-world MEC platform was introduced by Nokia Networks in 2013. In
that, the computing platform called radio applications cloud servers (RACS) – was
fully integrated with the flexi multiradio base station [19]. Later the term, mobile
edge computing was standardized by European Telecommunications Standards
Institute (ETSI) and Industry Specifications Group (ISG). It is acknowledged
by European 5G PPP (5G Infrastructure Public Private Partnership) as a prime
emerging technology for 5G networks [8].
The ETSI Mobile Edge Computing Industry Specification Group (MEC ISG)
was formed in December 2014. Its aim was “to create a standardized, open
environment which will allow the efficient and seamless integration of applications
from vendors, service providers, and third-parties across multi-vendor mobile edge
computing platforms” [9]. The ISG recently received a 2-year extension – beginning
in March 2017. The ISG modified its terms of reference to include the investigation
of the use of edge computing beyond a “mobile-only” access environment such as
areas with Wi-Fi and fixed access technologies. Therefore, ISG will be changing its
name from “mobile edge computing” to “multiaccess edge computing” to reflect the
change in terms of reference, while still maintaining the widely recognized “MEC”
acronym [10]. 3GPP has also recently published their work plan toward 5G and
more specifically toward meeting IMT-2020 requirements, which includes study
items and development of technical reports on scenarios that drive 5G architecture
and interfaces. Major standardization bodies, ITU (International Telecommunica-
tion Union), and European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) have
initiated activities relating to 5G [11–14] with commercial deployments expected
in 2020.
MEC enables cloud computing capabilities at the edge of the cellular network.
It also enables the applications and related processing tasks like content caching
and media processing to run on the edge of the network, i.e., more closer to the
mobile subscribers. This not only improves the user experience by providing high
3 A Comprehensive Survey on Architecture for Big Data Processing. . . 35
availability of the content with reduced latency, but also puts control of the service
delivery in the hands of mobile network operator (MNO). This further allows the
MNO to manage user experience and also helps to rapidly deploy new applications
and services to the subscribers [15]. MEC can be implemented within the existing
3GPP mobile network infrastructure. Therefore, it is expected to be integral part of
5G specifications.
The cloud service platforms will be providing the computation and other services
to the mobile communication networks with the help of huge alternative architecture
centralized data centers which are the backbone of the network. A signal or data
packet usually spends RTT (round trip time) of several milliseconds to travel
between the mobile device and the cloud in order to be processed in the data center
which might be several kilometers away. To reduce the RTT to the range of less than
1 ms, the distance between the mobile and cloud can be no greater than 100 km. But
the closest places or “hops” to a user are the base stations at the edge of the network
which can be used to outsource the cloud closer to the user providing low latency.
Therefore, in response to the above requirement, the mobile operators are working
on mobile edge computing (MEC) in which the computing, storage, and networking
resources are integrated with the base stations. Hence, all compute intensive and
latency sensitive applications like augmented reality and image processing can
be hosted at the edge of the network. This provides the end user with swift and
powerful computing, energy efficiency, storage capacity, mobility, location, and
context awareness support [16, 17]. A decentralized architecture with compute and
storage capability at the edge of the network provides an intermediate processing
stage to reduce the amount of data shipped back to the cloud by executing algorithms
for applications such as face recognition, load building, and landmark labeling
for augmented reality (AR) – a cognitive assistance or even cloud-sourced video
analytics. The communications service providers (CSPs) will need to respond fast
to capacity increases while maintaining latency.
According to the white paper published by ETSI, mobile edge computing can be
characterized by [18]:
• On Premises: MEC platforms can run isolated from the rest of the network,
while they have access to local resources. This is very important for machine-
to-machine scenarios. The MEC property of segregation from other networks
also makes it less vulnerable.
• Proximity: Being deployed at the nearest location, mobile edge computing has an
advantage to analyze and materialize big data. It is also beneficial for compute-
hungry devices such as segmented reality, video analytics, etc.
• Lower latency: Mobile edge computing services are deployed at the nearest
location to user devices, isolating network data movement from the core network.
Hence, user experience is accounted high quality with ultra-low latency and high
bandwidth.
• Location awareness: Edge-distributed devices utilize low-level signaling for
information sharing. MEC receives information from edge devices within the
local access network to discover the location of services.
36 M. J. Kaur
• Network context information: Applications providing network information and

services of real-time network data can benefit businesses and events by imple-
menting MEC in their business model. On the basis of RAN real-time informa-
tion, these applications can estimate the congestion of the radio cell and network
bandwidth. This will help them in future to make smart decisions for better
delivery of services to customers.
In this chapter, an extensive survey of the mobile edge computing in the field of
big data processing is presented along with architecture, framework, applications,
and challenges. Finally, deep learning approach has been discussed in the context of
MEC applications. Deep learning has drawn a lot of academic and industrial interest
and has been applied to various classification tasks, natural language processing,
object detection, etc.
3.2.1 Framework
A general view of basic cellular network is shown in Fig. 3.1. The core network is
wire connected (e.g., IP/ethernet) with radio access network (RAN). RAN connects
the base station with backhaul network through the interface that supports high data
transfer rate [19]. Wireless user equipment connects through RAN to the mobile
operator network.
RAN facilitates the connection between mobile phones and the mobile core
network. It also covers the wide geographical area divided into several cells, and
each cell is integrated with its base station. Base stations are further connected to
the base station controller (BSC) via microwave or WLL. It is also known as radio
network controller (RNC) which is responsible to control the base station node and
Fig. 3.1 Basic cellular architecture

carry out the mobility management functions. In the framework of 4G long-term

evolution and future 5G mobile network architecture, different solutions have been
proposed to overcome the challenges which involve capacity and latency of current
radio access network (RAN). With an accustomed support of mobile internet and
digital radio signaling capability using time division multiple access (TDMA), LTE
4G got an edge over the other wireless telecommunication technologies providing
the best QoE.
A centralized RAN system, also known as cloud-RAN (C-RAN), concentrates
different processing resources together to form a pool in a central data center.
This not only reduces deployment costs but also leverages low latency connections
between different RAN processing units enabling a series of enhanced capabilities.
Using C-RAN, the number of cell sites will be reduced, and the user will be offered
better QoE while maintaining similar coverage and reducing operating expenses.
Figure 3.2 shows the general architecture of mobile edge computing. The MEC
layer resides between the mobile devices and the cloud. It mostly compiles with
cloud computing to support and enhance the performance of the mobile subscribers
[20–23]. As shown, the mobile edge servers are computing equipment installed
at or near base stations. Unlike centralized cloud servers or peer-to-peer mobile
devices, MEC is managed locally by the network operator. The generic computing
resources within the mobile edge servers are virtualized and are exposed via
application program interfaces (APIs), so that they are accessible by both user and
operator applications. Also, these provide local virtual machines (VMs) to serve the
computation needs of mobile devices often with much lower latency than remote
cloud servers. They also serve some other functions such as content caching, traffic
monitoring, local information aggregation, and user location services.
A simplified framework architecture for MEC is shown in Fig. 3.3. It depicts the
high-level functional entities that are further grouped in the system level, host level,
Fig. 3.2 Mobile edge computing (MEC) architecture

38 M. J. Kaur
Fig. 3.3 Mobile edge computing (MEC) framework
and network level. At the mobile edge system level, the mobile edge orchestrator
serves the central role of coordinating among the UEs, the mobile edge hosts,
and the network operator. It records accounting and topological information about
the deployed mobile edge hosts, available resources, and available mobile edge
services. Also, it interfaces with the virtualization infrastructure and maintains
authentication and validation of application packages. It maintains information
on the whole mobile edge system about all the deployed hosts, the services and
resources available in each host, the applications that are instantiated, and the
topology of the network. It manages the applications by checking the integrity
and authenticity of the application, validating the policies for the applications, and
maintaining a catalog of the applications that are available.
At the mobile edge host level, mobile edge applications run VMs supported by
virtualization infrastructure within the mobile edge host. They provide services
like computational job execution and UE location information. The virtualization
infrastructure includes a data plane that executes the forwarding rules received by
the mobile edge platform and routes the traffic among the applications, services,
and the networks. It also manages the virtualized resources for the mobile edge
applications, which consists of allocating and releasing virtualized computation,
storage, and network resources. It provides support for fault and performance
monitoring by collecting and reporting information on virtualized resources and
providing information further to server- and system-level management.
The mobile edge platform hosts mobile edge services. It interacts with mobile
edge applications, so that they can advertise, discover, offer, and consume mobile
edge services. The mobile edge platform manager provides element management
functions to the mobile edge platform and administers application essentials such
as life cycle, service requirements, operational rules, domain name system (DNS)
configuration, and security. In addition, mobile edge host can provide persistent
storage and time of the day information for the applications. The mobile edge
platform receives the traffic forwarding rules from the mobile edge platform
manager, mobile edge applications, and mobile edge services and based on those as
well as on policies it provides the instructions to the forwarding plane. Mobile edge
platform can communicate with other mobile edge platforms over reference point,
which is intended for control plane procedures. Using this interface, platforms may
be grouped together and can form a communications grid.
3.3 Role of MEC Toward Big Data: Applications

and Challenges
IoT devices are expected to generate a significant amount of data as their use
becomes ubiquitous. IoT cloud communication models and big data generated
by devices result in increased latency and incremental data transfer cost [24–26].
Using cloud computing with the IoT will raise concerns about privacy, and also
the most of the IoT end nodes are power constrained. While design considerations
are intended to improve the performance, the processing and memory capabilities
will be constrained. Offloading some computing tasks to the network edge could
be the solution – called mobile edge computing. MEC can address these issues by
serving as an aggregation point. MEC consists of geodistributed servers or virtual
servers with built-in IT services. These can be implemented locally at mobile user
premises. MEC may utilize cellular network elements like base station, Wi-Fi access
point, LTE base station, or a 3G/LTE cell aggregation site which can be indoor or
outdoor. Therefore, it works on both downstream data on behalf of cloud services
and upstream data on behalf of IoT services.
3.3.1 Applications
MEC offers high bandwidth and low latency mobile access to both information
and computation resources, because of its proximity to the mobile devices. Hence,
reducing the resource demands on the mobile backhaul. The mobile edge host is
40 M. J. Kaur
a privileged location to run applications with sensitive real-time requirement, given

its proximity to where relevant data traffic is generated and delivered. By 2018, 40%
of the IoT-created data will be stored, processed, analyzed, and acted upon close to
or at the edge of the network [27].
• Surveillance and Safety – In applications that require intensive computational
load like video surveillance and pattern recognition, MEC with big data pro-
cessing plays an important role. Real-time automated surveillance requires low
communication delays which will be fulfilled by mobile edge host’s computing
resources. A local network of IoT devices, e.g., smart phones, etc., are connected
to the broadband mobile network through local IoT gateway. The video streams
are conveyed to the mobile edge host, where the application for video surveil-
lance is running. The real-time processing is also carried out, so that if there is an
error in the recorded video, the application can send a trigger to the central office
located in the internet. This configuration prevents to deploy costly dedicated
equipment and connectivity infrastructure, by simply leveraging the radio access
network and mobile edge system from the mobile network operator [28, 29].
• Offloading – With the motivation to increase limited computing, storage, band-
width, or battery capacities of mobile devices by referring to external, rich
resource systems, MEC serves as additional support. The compute intensive
tasks are offloaded either because they cannot be executed in-time by the devices
due to limited hardware capabilities or to reduce the power consumption of the
mobile devices. In case, no MEC server is available, mobile devices can degrade
gracefully to a more distant MEC server, internet cloud servers, or their own
hardware resources [28, 29]. Examples of such jobs include high-speed browser,
3D rendering, video analysis, sensor data processing, and language translation.
With MEC as an option to cheaply offload heavy computation to nearby
mobile edge hosts for accelerated processing, the mobile device’s computational
capability an energy consumption will no longer be the bottleneck in delivering
rich applications. This is particularly appealing in the IoT environment, where the
mobile devices are likely to consist mostly of small sensors and other equipment
with minuscule processors and limited energy supply, even though offloading
introduces cost due to higher system complexity
• Augmented reality (AR), gaming – These applications all require low latency.
The heavy computation requirements of jobs such as physical simulation and
artificial intelligence might overwhelm the limited capability of the devices.
Offloading these jobs to a MEC server provides an appropriate balance between
computation power and proximity.
• Healthcare – There have been exponential growth in development and deploy-
ment of human computer interaction devices recently, such as smart phone,
smart watch, etc. To add more reliability to the existing system of cloud-based
healthcare, MEC helps health advisors to assist their patients, independent of
their geographical location. It enables smartphones to collect patient physio-
logical information like pulse rate, temperature, etc., and send it to the cloud
server for storage, data sync, and sharing. Health advisers will have access to the
cloud server, and they can immediately diagnose the patients and can assist them
accordingly [30–34].
• Moving IoT devices and connected vehicles – The motivation behind the IoT
use cases is being connected to the network and also mobility with connectivity,
for example, drones, vehicles, etc. The connection scenario can be vehicle to
vehicle, vehicle to access point, or access point to access point. MEC offers local
processing and low latency to such situations and is expected to be important to
5G services. In fact, mobility and session management is usually performed by
the core network functions, for example, serving gateway (SGW) and serving
GPRS support node (SGSN) in the current 3G/4G networks. Mobile edge
applications for IoT would not require complex traffic filtering and manipulation
in order to receive the desired traffic and the mobile edge platform can leverage
on legacy network entities to carry out consistent control plane operations,
e.g., for mobility as well as other crucial aspects associated to gating, QoS
enforcement, charging, etc. Therefore, MEC enables scalable, reliable, and
distributed environments that are synced with the local sensors [35].
3.3.2 Challenges
In this section, we will discuss the challenges for deployment and implementation
of real-time data processing at the edge of the network [36, 37]. Current cloud
computing frameworks like Amazon Web Service, Microsoft Azure, and Google
App Engine can support data-intensive applications but data processing [38–40].
• Threats related to infrastructure – The concept of the edge network computing
is part of the “last mile network” which means that it uses many technologies
to build a network. While same is advantageous, and at the same time prone
to several types of attacks like DoS (Denial of Service) attacks and jamming.
These two types of attacks can easily consume bandwidth, frequency band, and
computing resources at the edge. Also, there could be rogue users that can intrude
the system and perform some malicious activities. For example, a device can be
reconfigured and set to send fake information or any incorrect data. Hence, any
compromised device connected in a cluster environment can change and control
services in that cluster.
• Virtualization – There are various challenges related to virtualization technol-
ogy – which is based to share the resources in the mobile edge computing
environment. Therefore, if one resource is compromised, it can affect the whole
virtualization infrastructure. One of the common security concerns is privacy
leakage. The APIs implemented to deliver the information should be protected
against any kind of malicious activities. The network functions virtualization
(NFV) is a core enabling technology employed by the mobile edge hosts to
create network elements like routers, packet gateways, and internet protocol (IP)
multimedia subsystems, using generic hardware. By separating software from
42 M. J. Kaur
hardware, it allows dynamic provisioning of services and flexible deployment of

network functions. However, the performance of current NFV implementations
often falls well below that of dedicated hardware network equipment. This can be
managed by small cells, where the base stations are located, and their associated
mobile edge hosts would be required to have flexible installation [41, 42].
• Mobility management – Mobility is one of the main aspects of mobile edge
computing. Usually when the handoff occurs from one base station to the other,
the other active applications running on the mobile hosts and servers should
remain intact. Also, the virtual machines (VMs) created on that host must migrate
to the new host efficiently. This whole process involves the communication as
well as the computation handoff which is quite an expensive and complicated
affair itself [43]. Therefore, it will be necessary to accurately model the handoff
procedure by facilitating high density of base stations in 5G and also with a
trade-off between the frequency and the data rate. Therefore, the main challenge
to manage the mobility efficiently is to balance these trade-offs in a complicated
scenario.
• Discovering edge nodes and computing on edge nodes – MEC involves the
mechanisms to discover the appropriate nodes on the network that can act
as edge. Due to the large volume of devices and data involved, the process
would need to be rapid enough so as to allow seamless integration of the
resources. Hence, it is a challenge to deal with the edge nodes and the edge hosts
reliably and proactively, and hence, more efficient methods would be required
to make it practical. After the discovery of the edge nodes, another challenge
is to incorporate high power computing resources that can handle analytical
computing tasks. Also, these resources would be required to be portable across
different environments.
3.4 Deep Learning for Reliable and Intelligent Mobile Edge

Computing for Big Data Processing Applications: State
of the Art
Big data processing systems in mobile environments require ultra-low latency and
reliable data analytics solutions that can combine in real-time heterogeneous mix
of data stemming from the IoT mobile devices. Such data analytics capabilities
cannot be provided by cloud-centric data processing techniques. With higher
capability of smart mobile devices, a distributed mobile edge computing architecture
can leverage deep learning techniques for reliable mobile sensing, automate the
detection process, and also to detect the security threats. In this section, we will
survey the state-of-the-art research efforts on the same issue in the context of MEC.
Deep learning is a promising approach for extracting accurate information from
IoT devices deployed in complex environments. Deep learning is more suitable
for mobile edge computing due to its multilayer structure. Deep neural networks
provide highly accurate classifiers which consist of different layers that follow each
other. Each layer is a simple function of its previous layer, representing a more
sophisticated concept than the previous layer. Therefore, the initial layer is the raw
input data, and the final layer gives the result of the inference.
Machine learning methods process the data streams by performing supervised,
unsupervised, semisupervised, and deep learning models [44]. The data mining
and machine learning methods are useful for early knowledge discovery from big
data streams. Therefore, these methods are useful for real-time big data analytics
where multiple learning models at different levels of big data systems filter the
data streams and uncover the knowledge patterns in parallel [45–47]. Deep neural
network (DNN) is the technology behind voice-based personal assistance [48],
self-driving cars [49], automatic image processing [50], etc., and finance analytics
has quickly adopted machine learning to harness large volume of data in areas of
fraud detection, risk management, and compliance. Various smart services are being
pushed to edge devices. For example, Intel’s Movidius Neural Compute Stick [51]
is a tiny deep learning device that one can use to accelerate AI programming and
DNN inference application deployment at the edge. Basically, DNNs are the types
of artificial neural networks (ANN) that work as function approximators used to
analyze the correlation between relevant features and the output of the processed
data. Therefore, DNNs are ANN with multiple hidden layers [52].
3.4.1 Deep Learning for Mobile Sensing
Deep neural networks (DNNs) can model high-level abstractions in data due to
feature hierarchy that allows each hidden layer to train on a distinct feature set
based on the previous hidden layer’s output. Hence, DNNs are able to recognize
and model complex features from large datasets like video, radar readings from
various IoT mobile devices. Various machine learning algorithms can be employed
for edge analytics in mobile environment like recurrent neural networks (RNNs),
convolutional neural networks (CNNs), restricted Boltzmann machines (RBMs),
generative adversarial networks (GANs), and long short-term memory (LSTM) [53–
56]. In this particular case of mobile sensing, recurrent neural networks (RNNs) are
more suitable for variable length sequential data like the one produced by mobile
sensors [57, 58]. Some other deep learning and the related issues are depicted in
Table 3.1.
3.4.2 Deep Learning for Automatic Detection Process
In this section, we investigate the overall data processing workflow in collection and
analysis of broadcast messages from the base stations in the mobile environment.
These broadcast messages are continuously being transmitted from the base stations
44 M. J. Kaur
Table 3.1 Deep learning methods, description, and issues for mobile sensing
S.no. Method Description and issues
1 Residual nets [59] These introduce shortcut connections into CNNs, which greatly
reduces the difficulty of training super deep models. However,
since residual nets mainly focus on visual inputs, they lose the
capability to model temporal relationships, which are great
importance in time-series sensor inputs.
2 LRCN [60] These apply CNNs to extract features for each video frame and
combine video frame sequences with LSTM [61], which exploits
spatial-temporal relationships between video inputs. However, it
does not consider modeling multimodal inputs. This capability is
important to mobile sensing and computing tasks.
3 DBM [62] Multimodal DBMs merge multimodal inputs such as images and
text, with deep Boltzmann machines (DBMs). However, the work
does not model temporal relationships and does not apply tailored
structures such as CNNs to effectively and efficiently exploit
local interactions within input data.
4 RBM [63] and These use deep Boltzmann machines and multimodal DBMs to
MultiRBM [64] improve the performance of heterogeneous human activity
recognition.
5 IDNet [65] It applies CNNs to the biometric gait analysis task.
6 DeepX [66] and These reduce the energy consumption of deep neural networks,
RedEye [67] based on software and hardware, respectively.
LRCN long-term recurrent convolutional networks, LSTM long short-term memory, DBM deep
Boltzmann machines, RBM restricted Boltzmann machines, RNN recurrent neural networks, CNN
convolutional neural networks
and dictate how mobile phones interact with them. These messages also include
information on how the base station communicates with other base stations and
handles cellular traffic in the surrounding RF environment. The broadcast messages
are decoded, and the resultant textual data are processed and used as input to
the machine learning algorithms [68]. LTE technology, which is based on UMTS,
is optimized for all-IP traffic and has several advantages including high network
throughput and low latency.
There are many existing methods to detect the base station routers (BSRs) that
use global positioning system (GPS) for location information. These methods are
time lapse based or configuration based. However, in case of mobile edge com-
puting, flexible and more efficient solutions are required, which can automatically
detect the presence of noncommercial BSRs without the prior need of location
information, extensive time-lapse surveys or without scanning the databases of
known commercial carriers so as to reduce the comeback time. Hence, there is a
need for automated data mining techniques to understand the various patterns in
big data generated by the mobiles and base stations. Most of the state-of-the-art
methods focus on unsupervised clustering which is the most popular data mining
method used for finding hidden patterns in data. Table 3.2 gives a brief on some of
machine learning methods.
Table 3.2 Various machine learning techniques for automatic detection

S.No. Method Description
1 SOM [69–72] Self-organizing map (SOM) is a type of artificial neural
network that is trained using machine learning to
produce training samples called maps. In mobile
networks, SOM can be used to find similar behavior
cells located close to each other.
2 K-means clustering [73] A combination of SOM and K-means clustering
algorithm can be used to isolate the cell clusters with
similar behaviors.
3. Supervised binary This was used for identification of telecommunications
classification [74] fraud cases.
4. Agglomerative hierarchical Used in comparison with [71], where dendrograms were
clustering [75] used to display the results.
5. Naïve Bayesian classifier It has been used for automatic diagnosis for RANs
[76] which utilizes KPI information for diagnosis in
GSM/GPRS networks.
Table 3.3 Some existing work done for detection of attacks

S.no. Work done Description
1. Crowdroid [77] Cloud-based machine learning framework for malicious application
detection.
2. MADAM [78] This framework utilizes machine learning to classify applications. It
extracted 13 features at the user and kernel level.
3. DREBIN [79] Method of detection of Android malicious applications on smart
phones. It learns the difference between the benign and malicious
applications by extracting the set of features and the disassembled
code of applications.
4. Andromaly [80] Feedforward neural networks were used for training the model that
builds distinguishable patterns between benign and malicious
application. Recurrent neural networks were used to train the model
with system calls of the benign applications execution behavior.
5. Marvin [81] This method combined the static and dynamic analysis and applied
machine learning techniques to assess the risk of unknown
applications.
3.4.3 Deep Learning for Detection of Security Threats
While mobile edge computing is an interesting computing paradigm for dynamic

systems, new types of vulnerabilities and attacks (especially those that come from
the edge network itself) are also one of the important challenges to address. There-
fore, detecting attacks and associating them based on their location information are
also important. Machine learning algorithms have been used to detect such attacks,
and there has been a significant work in this direction. Table 3.3 gives an insight
into the existing work in the detection of attacks.
46 M. J. Kaur
3.5 Conclusion and Future Directions
The ubiquity of mobile phones and the associated big data consist of large and
complex datasets generated by the wide variety of applications and other sensor
data involved. With the implementation of MEC near the mobile devices can help
the data analytics extracting the meaningful information from the raw data on
the mobile edge node which could be then sent to the cloud servers for further
processing. This will reduce the computational load on the cloud server for storage,
data sync, and sharing. Deployment of MEC can solve many problems involving
bandwidth, battery life, and storage to the resource-constrained mobile devices. In
this chapter, we had a brief discussion on how the machine learning methods can
help tailor the needs of the mobile edge analytics to overcome various challenges
of mobile sensing, detection of the base station routers, and also the detection
of attacks for secure and reliable solutions. For the future work, it would be
interesting to investigate other deep learning algorithms for big data processing in
MEC environment and apply these algorithms on different datasets to examine their
effectiveness. Comparison of performance of different canonical approaches can be
done, and potential applications of more sophisticated deep learning techniques can
be explored. MEC still being in early stages of research and development have many
challenges and, at the same time, give a variety of innovative opportunities in the
future.
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Chapter 4
Taxonomy of Edge Computing:
Challenges, Opportunities, and Data
Reduction Methods
Kusumlata Jain and Smaranika Mohapatra
4.1 Introduction
In recent years, cloud computing has made significant advances and is being more
commonly used because of its high value efficiency and flexibility resulting from
consolidation. Cloud computing has led to the speedy development of cellular
internet and internet of things (IoT) packages for demanding situations using
sophisticated software and services. IoT is experiencing explosive growth and is
virtually transforming all aspects of modern life [1]. Cisco has predicted that 50
billion devices will be linked to the IoT by 2020 [2]. As these new technologies
enter the everyday lives of consumers, new challenges arise that cannot be safely
addressed through a centralized cloud computing structure, including stringent
latency, capacity constraints, useful resource-confined devices, uninterrupted ser-
vices with intermittent connectivity, improved security [3], and latency needs.
Because the records increase each day on the network, the performance of the
machines continues to be affected. This chapter discusses basic information about
cloud technology and IoT, associated challenges, and statistics reduction techniques
for edge computing to reduce data and latency time.
K. Jain () · S. Mohapatra

Department of Computer Science & Engineering, Maharishi Arvind Institute of Engineering
& Technology, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India
Rajasthan Technical University, Kota, Rajasthan, India

52 K. Jain and S. Mohapatra
4.2 Cloud Computing
The term “cloud” refers to a network or internet that is present at a remote location.
The cloud can provide changes over public and private networks. Cloud comput-
ing is about controlling/moving, configuring, and using hardware and software
remotely. It offers online data storage and the basic functionality needed for a
business or society to operate. However, certain accommodations and models may
be needed locally for cloud computing to be feasible and accessible to end users.
Two categories of models for cloud computing are the deployment models and
service models.
The deployment models describe usage access to the cloud. The cloud may use
one of four types of deployment models: public, private, hybrid, or community:
• Public cloud: A public cloud sanctions systems and changes places to easily
accommodate the general public. A public cloud may be less secure than other
types of clouds because of its accessibility and openness.
• Private cloud: In a private cloud, systems and services are easy to access, use,
and understand within an organization. A private cloud is more secure than other
clouds because of its private nature.
• Hybrid cloud: A hybrid cloud has characteristics of both private and public
clouds. The analytical process is performed through a private cloud, whereas
non-analytical work is performed through a public cloud.
• Community cloud: A community cloud is deployed by a group of organizations
or industries.
The service models describe the eight types of services offered by a cloud:
• Everything-as-a-Service (EaaS): This type of service is given to all users of
the software and hardware to control business processes, including interactions
between users. The user only needs to have access to the internet.
• Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS): In this type, users can avail a service or
computing platform by using a virtual platform that is connected to the network.
The service is automatically adjusted according to the use.
• Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS): In this service, the user is given a computing
platform along with operating software and other necessary programs.
• Software-as-a-Service (SaaS): Also known as “software on demand,” this service
deploys software on remote servers but also uses the internet.
• Hardware-as-a-Service (HaaS): This service uses uncovered hardware on which
a user can deploy its own software, similar to IaaS but deviating a bit.
• Workspace-as-a-Service (WaaS): This service is implemented by organizations
or companies that use cloud computing to set up the necessary workspace for
their employees.
• Data-as-a-Service (DaaS): This service is used to store large amounts of data
and information in a storage space.
4 Taxonomy of Edge Computing: Challenges, Opportunities, and Data. . . 53
• Security-as-a-Service (SaaS): This service enables users to safely implement and

use Web technologies, providing security in communication media and local
networks.
4.3 Internet of Things
IoT is an advanced automation and analytical system that has exploited various
aspects of technology, including recent advances in software enhancements, falling
hardware prices, and modern attitudes toward technology. IoT combines sensing,
communication, astronomically immense data, and artificial intelligence to dis-
tribute consummate systems for a product or accommodation. This collection of new
and advanced technologies has made major behavioral, political, and socioeconomic
changes in the lives of techno-savvy consumers. The most important feature of IoT
is its ability to make things “smart”; in this way, it enhances every aspect of life.
The “thing” in IoT can be any contrivance that is artificially smart enough
to communicate with a network without manual intervention to facilitate the
interaction. The communication can be with internal states of the “thing” or the
external environment, which in turn assists with the decision-making process. IoT
allows a “thing” to be smart enough to make a decision for you; for example,
your refrigerator and cabinets can become smart enough to detect when milk
and your favorite cereal are running low, then place an order with your preferred
grocer. As such, IoT introduces a new paradigm for active content, product, or
accommodation engagements. IoT devices have become smaller, more affordable,
and more powerful over time. IoT uses these purpose-built minuscule devices to
work with precision, scalability, and diversity.
The advantages of IoT span across every area of lifestyle and business to improve
the overall quality of life, including in communications, automation and control,
data gathering, data monitoring, time saving, cost-effectiveness, and efficiency.
Despite all its advantages, IoT also has security and privacy issues. The major
disadvantage of IoT is that it requires immense data transmission to the cloud and
thus increased security.
IoT is increasing exponentially and will potentially network billions or even
trillions of devices. Ericsson Inc. [4] has estimated that the data produced by
people, machines, and things will reach 500 zettabytes by 2019; however, Cisco
Global Cloud Index has estimated that global data centre IP traffic will only reach
10.4 zettabytes by that time [5]. Most IoT devices will be located at the edge of
the internet and could provide new applications, changing many aspects of both
traditional industrial productions and our everyday living. Some of these devices are
already on the market, including Apple watches, Oculus Rift helmets [6], Google
Nest [7], Fitbit sports trackers, and Google Glasses. By 2019, 45% of IoT-created
data will be stored, processed, analyzed, and acted upon close to (or at the edge of)
the network [8] but eventually transmitted to the cloud.
4.4 Machine-To-Machine Communication
In machine-to-machine communication, multiple devices can connect and exchange

information directly with each other, without any intermediary hardware assis-
tance [9]. These devices can connect with each other over different types of
networks, including but not limited to the internet or IP networks. These device-to-
device networks allow devices to exchange information in hybrid communication
protocols, which combine device-to-device and other communication protocols
to achieve quality-of-service (QoS) requirements. This model is commonly used
in applications such as smart home systems and automatic controls in electrical
systems, which communicate with each other by sending small data packets with
relatively low data rate requirements. Some typical IoT devices of this type are smart
door locks, smart switches, and smart lights, which also typically only exchange
small data packets.
From the user’s perspective, a problem with machine-to-machine commu-
nications is a lack of compatibility, because different devices from different
manufacturers use different protocols. Taking smart home devices as an example,
Z-Wave protocol devices cannot communicate with ZigBee protocol devices [10].
These compatibility issues limit a user’s options and experience.
4.5 Edge Computing
As IoT grows, the data in the network is also increasing. To reduce these data,
the technology of edge computing may be used. Edge computing allows devices
to perform computations at the edge of the network, on downstream data on behalf
of cloud services and on upstream data on behalf of IoT services. Here, “edge” refers
to any computing and network resources that are between the data sources and cloud
data centers. For example, a smart phone is the edge between an individual and the
cloud, a gateway in a smart home is the edge between the house and the cloud, and a
micro data center and a cloudlet are the edge between a mobile device and the cloud.
Rationally, edge computing is performed at proximity to the data source. Figure 4.1
illustrates the concept of edge computing.
In the edge computing paradigm, the “things” are data consumers and data
producers. The edge can perform computing offloading, data storage, caching and
processing, request distributions, and distribution accommodations from the cloud
to the user. The edge has QoS requirements such as reliability, security, and privacy
firewalls.
Fig. 4.1 Edge computing paradigm
4.5.1 Why Edge Computing
IoT applications generate enormous amounts of data by IoT sensors. The big data
are subsequently analyzed to determine reactions to events or to extract analytics or
statistics. However, sending all of these data to the cloud would require prohibitively
high network bandwidth. Current research efforts are investigating how to better
exploit capabilities at the edge of the network to support the IoT and its needs [11].
In edge computing, the massive data generated by different kinds of IoT devices can
be processed at the network edge instead of transmitting the data to a centralized
cloud infrastructure due to bandwidth and energy consumption concerns. Edge
computing can provide services with faster response and better quality than cloud
computing. Edge computing is suitable for integration with IoT to provide efficient
and secure services for many end users. Edge computing-based architecture also
should be considered for future IoT infrastructure.
Push from Cloud Services Putting all computing tasks on the cloud is an efficient
way to process data because the cloud’s computing power outclasses the capability
of the things at the edge. However, compared with the fast-developing speed of
data processing, the bandwidth of the network has come to a standstill. With the
growing quantity of data generated at the edge, the speed of data transportation
is becoming a bottleneck in the cloud-based computing paradigm. For example,
about 5 gigabytes of data are generated by a Boeing 787 every second [12], but
the bandwidth between the airplane and either a satellite or the base station on the
ground is not large enough for data transmission. Consider an autonomous vehicle
as another example: 1 gigabyte of data is generated by the car every second, and
it requires real-time processing for the vehicle to make correct decisions [13]. If
all the data needed to be sent to the cloud for processing, the response time would
be too long. Furthermore, it would be challenging for current network bandwidth
and reliability to support many vehicles in one area. In this case, the data needs to
be processed at the edge for shorter response times, more efficient processing, and
reduced network pressure.
Pull from IoT Many kinds of electrical devices will become part of the IoT. These
devices will play the roles of both data producers and data consumers, such as air
quality sensors, LED bars, streetlights, and internet-connected microwave ovens. It
is safe to infer that the number of things at the edge of the network will increase to
the billions in a few years. The raw data produced by these devices will be enormous,
with conventional cloud computing being too inefficient to handle the data. Thus,
most of the data produced by IoT will never be transmitted to the cloud. Instead, the
data will be consumed at the edge of the network.
In conventional cloud computing, data producers generate raw data and transfer
it to the cloud, and data consumers a send request for consuming data to the cloud.
However, this structure is not sufficent for IoT. First, the data quantity at the edge
is too large, which will lead to unnecessary bandwidth and computing resource
usage. Second, privacy protection requirements will pose an obstacle for cloud
computing in IoT. Lastly, most of the end nodes in IoT are energy-constrained
things, whereas the wireless communication module is usually very energy hungry.
Therefore, offloading some computing tasks to the edge could be more energy
efficient.
Change From Data Consumer to Producer In the cloud computing paradigm,
the end devices at the edge usually as as data consumers, such as when you
watch a YouTube video on your smart phone. However, people now are also
producing data from their mobile devices. This change from data consumer to data
producer/consumer requires more function placement at the edge, such as when
users take photos or record video.
4.5.2 Technologies to Implement Edge Computing
This section discusses the basic techniques to implement edge computing. As edge
computing pushes the data storage and process near the edge of the network, small
data centers can be provided near the edge device, with or near the cloud, in
techniques known as cloudlets, mobile edge computing (MEC), and fog computing.
Fig. 4.2 Cloudlet architecture
4.5.2.1 Cloudlet
A cloudlet may address the critical challenge of end-to-end responsiveness between

a mobile device and the associated cloud. A cloudlet is a mobility-enhanced small-
scale cloud data center that is located at the edge of the internet. It is a trusted,
resource-rich system or cluster of systems that are well connected to each other and
the internet, which is available for use by nearby mobile devices [14]. As shown in
Fig. 4.2, a cloudlet is the middle tier in a three-tier hierarchy architecture to achieve
good response times.
The aim of cloudlet is to provide lower latency by supporting resource-intensive
and interactive mobile applications through powerful computing resources for
mobile devices. Mobile devices use a nearby cloudlet for computing toward the
cloud. It is important here to differentiate a cloudlet from a cloud. First, a cloudlet
is much more agile in its provisioning because associated edge devices are highly
dynamic and mobile. Second, a good handoff is needed to support the seamless
mobility of edge devices. Third, to connect or communicate with the cloud, a mobile
node first connects to a nearby cloudlet and then the cloud in order to complete its
communication. Cloudlets reduce data on the network and the response latency to
mobile nodes.
4.5.2.2 Mobile Edge Computing
The concept of MEC was defined by the European Telecommunications Standards

Institute (ETSI) as a new technology that “provides an IT service environment
and cloud-computing capabilities at the edge of the mobile network, within the
Radio Access Network (RAN) and in close proximity to mobile subscribers” [15].
In a published white paper on MEC, ETSI considers MEC to be a key emerging
Fig. 4.3 Mobile edge computing
technology and an important component of future generation networks [16]. Figure

4.3, illustrates the concept of MEC.
In December 2014, ETSI established an Industry Specification Group (ISG) on
MEC to develop a standardized, open environment that will allow efficient and
seamless integration of third-party applications across multi-vendor platforms. In
January 2017, the MEC ISG released six specifications—one of which provides a
glossary of terms related to the conceptual, architectural, and functional elements
of MEC [17]. The purpose of this specification is to enable the consistent use of
terminology within ETSI MEC specifications and, beyond the ISG, more widely
in the industry. Other specifications describe the technical requirements enabling
interoperability and deployment, example use cases, and their technical benefits
[18] and provide a framework and reference architecture to enable mobile edge
applications to run efficiently and seamlessly in a mobile network [19]. The fourth
specification in MEC ISG introduces a number of service scenarios that would
benefit from the MEC technology [20]. The proof-of-concept (PoC) framework
specification defines a framework to coordinate and promote multi-vendor PoC
projects illustrating key aspects of MEC technology [21]. PoC projects are essential
to demonstrate MEC as feasible and valuable, to validate the specifications that are
being developed, to demonstrate use cases, and ultimately to help develop a diverse
and open MEC ecosystem. The last specification describes various metrics that can
potentially be improved by deploying a service on a MEC platform, such as latency,
energy efficiency, network throughput, system resource footprint, and quality [22].
Furthermore, the last specification also describes the best practices for measuring
such performance metrics.
ETSI announced six different MEC PoCs in September 2016, which were
accepted at the MEC World Congress in Munich. These PoCs will help to strengthen
the strategic planning and decision-making of organizations and identify which
MEC solutions may be viable in the network. Due to its advanced characteristics,
such as low latency, proximity, high bandwidth, and real-time insight into radio
network information and location awareness, MEC enables many new kinds of
applications and services for multiple sectors, such as consumer, enterprise, and
healthcare. MEC also seems to be a promising solution for handling video streaming
services in the context of smart cities [23].
4.5.2.3 Fog Computing
The new technology of fog computing is similar to edge computing but it works
with the cloud. The OpenFog Consortium was founded to drive industry and
academic leadership in fog computing architecture, testbed development, and a
variety of interoperability and composability deliverables that seamlessly leverage
cloud and edge architectures to enable end-to-end IoT scenarios [24]. OpenFog
Consortium published a white paper on fog computing in February 2016, which
outlined its approach to an open fog computing architecture (OpenFog architecture)
[25]. The OpenFog Consortium defined fog computing as “a system-level hori-
zontal architecture that distributes resources and services of computing, storage,
control and networking anywhere along the continuum from Cloud to Things
(https://www.openfogconsortium.org).” Fog computing differs from edge comput-
ing by providing tools for distributing, orchestrating, managing, and securing
resources and services across networks and between devices that reside at the edge.
Edge architecture places servers, applications, and small clouds at the edge. Fog
computing jointly works with the cloud, whereas edge is defined by exclusion of
the cloud. Figure 4.4 illustrates the concept of fog computing. In Figs. 4.3 and 4.4,
fog computing and edge computing are shown as the middle layer; however, edge
computing is toward the edge device, whereas the middle layer works with the cloud
in fog computing.
Fog computing standardization is mainly administered by the OpenFog Con-
sortium, whose objective is to influence standard bodies to create standards so
that IoT systems at the edge can inter-operate securely with other edge and cloud
services in a friction-free environment. The OpenFog Consortium has set up six
working groups: an architecture working group, communications working group,
manageability working group, security working group, software infrastructure
working group, and testbed working group. These working groups evaluate, classify,
Fig. 4.4 Fog computing
and recommend standards, practices, and technologies that are appropriate for
OpenFog architecture to address corresponding challenges.
4.6 Data Reduction Techniques
The expected huge increase in the number of IoT data sources, such as sensors,
embedded systems, and personal devices, provides good reason to implement
network-edge computing—that is, data pre-processing, local storage, and filtering
close to the data source. Specifically, data reduction at the network edge that is
on an IoT gateway device or a mini-server deployed locally (a cloudlet) or on
an IoT area network can prevent I/O bottlenecks, as well as dramatically reduce
storage, bandwidth, and energy costs. Many solutions have been provided, but these
solutions have two main obstacles in the implementation. Firstly, the most efficient
algorithms for data reduction in time series (which is one of the prevailing types of
data in IoT) were developed to work posteriori on big datasets; thus, they cannot
make decisions per incoming data item. Secondly, the state of the art lacks systems
that can apply any of the possible data reduction methods without adding significant
delays or heavyweight re-configurations.
There are many data reduction techniques used in edge computing. Based on
when data are sensed, two main categories of approaches can be used for IoT
data reduction at the network edge: (1) time series compression approaches or (2)
event- or policy-based engines. Time series compression and aggregation techniques

are based on sampling, summarization, approximation, or a similar approach.
For example, Fast Time Sequence Indexing for Arbitrary LpNorms is based on
piecewise approximation and replacement of every n points with their arithmetic
means. Another method is based on selecting only the “perceptually important
points” (PIPs) of the time series, which measures importance based on the distance
from other PIPs and on local minima and maxima, respectively. However, such
solutions are not designed to act upon streams (i.e., per incoming data item),
but rather on already collected data sets (posteriori). Furthermore, they are not
complemented by data quality control mechanisms; thus, they are often avoided
because of the information loss that selective forwarding or data filtering inherently
implies. Finally, to the best of our knowledge, they have not been sufficiently applied
or evaluated on modern types of IoT time series, such as sensor data from traffic
sensors, smart meters, industrial automation, or even smartphones.
Data handling solutions that use event- or policy-based engines have often
(implicitly) a similar final goal as time series compression approaches—namely
data reduction, although they usually rely on domain-specific rules rather than
on time series characteristics. For example, Shen et al. [26] described how to
use IP multimedia subsystems policies in order to perform (among others) a kind
of data aggregation on network-edge (gateway) devices in machine-to-machine
systems. Furthermore, Krikkit [27], an open-source solution initiated by Cisco, is
in the process of specifying a data format and a mechanism for telling network-
edge devices which data to forward and how. However, these approaches stop
at designing policy engines and policy languages for data reduction, without
developing or providing actual data reduction techniques. Thus, they practically
require the network edge developer to implement the data reduction logic from
scratch. A recent solution called FlexAnalytics [28] took things a step further by
providing flexible placement of analytics for data reduction between the network
edge and the backend system. This approach also includes experiments showing
how different data reduction techniques (mainly compression and visualization-
based data reduction) perform when applied at the network edge. However, it does
not enable new data reduction techniques (or ease existing ones when they are
applied at the network edge).
The three data reduction techniques described in the following sections can
reduce data collection and transmission process times.
Data Sampling Data sampling either reduces the amount of sensory data to be
further processed, paying special attention to extracting the most representative
points of the data set, or chooses a subset of sensors that contribute sensory
data among all the IoT sensors. Willett et al. [29] proposed an adaptive sampling
approach, in which only few sensor nodes are first activated to sample, which
leverages spatial correlations. Higher correlations (i.e., IoT sensors are closer to
each other) require fewer active sensors to sample data. The data are then sent to
a data fusion center, which derives valuable information regarding the environment
and the phenomenon under observation, activating more nodes if needed. The data
fusion center allocates network resources accordingly. By contrast, Jain and Chang
[30] adapted the sampling rate of the sensors to the communication resources while
minimizing the active sensors that stream data to a remote entity (i.e., server).
Compression Minimized datasets are easier to use in terms of processing and
inside the network movement for large storage. Compression-based techniques are
useful and appropriate for data reduction in edge computing. Compression can
be applied to already-sensed data. However, Li et al. [31] proposed a compressed
sensing framework, in which compressed sensing is applied prior to data acquisition.
In an approach by Liu et al. [32], compressed sensing is applied to the data on-the-
fly, under the assumption of opportunistic routing.
Data Aggregation Data aggregation consists of considering diverse sources of data
and gathering them together to build an accurate representation of the phenomena
under observation. These sources differ in that each of them is responsible for
a specific sensing task. In IoT and wireless sensor networks, data aggregation
techniques include operations such as solving the maximum, minimum, sum, aver-
age, median, and the count. Aggregation methods can be divided into centralized
and distributed methods. Centralized methods require continuous communication
among network entities. Hence, the communication overhead incurs additional
costs; consequently, such methods are not suitable for sensor networks. Therefore,
distributed methods such as clustering, multipath, and aggregate trees are commonly
employed [33]. Bash et al. [34] performed data aggregation with the purpose of
minimizing messaging costs among the sensor nodes. The node from which the
data is aggregated is proportional to the given size of the network. Similarly, Lin et
al. [35] divided the sensor network into non-overlapping regions, then sampled and
aggregated data from each region. Moreover, Kimura and Latifi [36] summarized
several methods of data compression, which consists of transmitting data as little
as possible by aggregating. Such methods are often valid for specific lookup
applications; hence, they are not applicable for applications that rely on fast- and
ever-changing sensory data.
Most data aggregation methods are based on trees or other fixed data structures.
For example, Huang et al. [37] proposed a spanning tree-based data aggregation
mechanism for large-scale networks. Each leaf in the tree is responsible for sensing
data from a given location. Data aggregation starts from the leaves and propagates
to the root (i.e., data collection entity). Other data aggregation methods rely on
no specific data structures [38]. Multi-task data sharing on the network leads to
efficient use of the available bandwidth; however, it introduces more computation
and communication costs. Such a technique aims at collecting as little data as
possible to satisfy all tasks’ needs.
IoT network architectures usually have a sensor-gateway router-cloud structure
[39]. Indeed, such an architecture tailors the proposed mechanism for data reduction,
with an aim to reduce the amount of transmitted data (and hence transmission
power) at a lower time cost. Pratt and Fink [40] proposed a technique for fast
compression of time series data and indexing of the compressed series. The
compression mechanism identifies the important points of a series and discards the
remaining ones. This technique has a good performance and can also be applied to
resource-concerned applications. This solution proposed a framework for real-time
data filtering over two tiers—namely, the gateway and the edge tier.
Other Approaches Other methods are being used to optimize data redundancy and
duplicity. Some techniques use the topological structures of unorganized data and
minimize the overall data using the network theory approaches:
1. Network Theory: The graph or networks play a basic role in reduction techniques
of higher dimensional unorganized data into lower dimensional organized data
[41]. However, the extraction of these structures is a difficult task due to
heterogeneity and complex structures. Trovati [42] proposed a network theory
approach that can abstract the properties of a network from the data. The
topological networks are constructed by establishing and evaluating relationships
(links) among different data points. The statistical node analysis of the networks
is performed for optimization and immensely colossal data reduction [43]. The
optimized networks are used in small networks, free scale, and any random
network.
2. Data Redundancy Elimination: Data redundancy is a key issue for data anal-
ysis in immensely colossal data environments. Three main reasons for data
redundancy are the integration of nodes, the expansion of datasets, and data
replication. The integration of a single virtual machine (VM) brings around
97% more redundancy, and the magnification in immensely colossal datasets
comes with 47% redundant data points [44]. Cluster deduplication may be
a generalized massive information reduction scheme for disk-based cluster
backup systems. The redundant information held on multiple disks and partition
areas is a serious challenge for giant processing systems. The deduplication
techniques salow systems to handle completely different information chunks
(partitions) and exploitation hash functions with lower intra-node and inter-node
communication overheads. Additionally, these strategies improve the storage
potency by eliminating redundant information from multiple nodes.
3. Data Pre-processing: Data pre-processing techniques help to extract meta-data
for further processing. Di Martino et al. [45] discussed the basic approaches for
data pre-processing, which are generally dependent on semantic analysis or data
structures. Some other techniques are also present, such as low memory pre-
filters for streaming data, URL filtration, and map-reducing methods.
4. Data Mining and Machine Learning: Recently, many data mining and machine
learning techniques have been used for data reduction. This concept is either
implemented to reduce data instantly after the acquisition or customized to
address some specific tasks. Jiang et al. [46] proposed a context-aware big data
forwarding scheme using distributed wearable sensor devices. The proposed
technique minimizes the communication and storage overhead in big data.
4.7 Some New Methods
Papageorgiou et al. [47] presented a new data reduction solution that automates the
switching between different data handling algorithms at the network edge, including
an analysis of adjusted data reduction methods. The authors also proposed three
versions of a new algorithm that is capable of performing real-time reduction of
incoming time series items based on the concept of perceptually important points.
Rehman et al. [48] presented and evaluated a novel big data processing archi-
tecture named RedEdge (i.e., data reduction on the edge) that incorporates a
mechanism to facilitate the processing of big data streams near the source of the
data. The RedEdge model leverages mobile IoT-termed mobile edge devices as
primary data processing platforms. In the case of the unavailability of computational
and battery power resources, it offloads data streams in nearer mobile edge devices
or to the cloud. The RedEdge architecture and the related mechanism were evaluated
within a real-world experiment setting involving 12 mobile users.
Kim et al. [49] took the approach of moving control of a low-power wide
area network (LPWAN) to the edge cloud, which provides computing and storage
environments at base stations. An LPWAN gateway is then integrated with the edge
cloud, and LPWAN data are cached at the edge cloud in the gateway for LPWAN
control. LPWAN controls, such as report interval control for data, transmission
power control, and data aggregation, are applied to improve the efficiency of data
transmission. Network control is performed by using cached data in the edge cloud.
Compared with the existing LPWAN control approach, the proposed approach
exhibits improved performance for IoT data transmission. The simulation results
demonstrated the proposed approach’s efficiency.
4.8 Comparison of Various Data Reduction Techniques
A comparison of various data reduction techniques is provided in Table 4.1.
4.9 Challenges and Solutions in Edge Computing
Programmability Generally in a cloud environment, users program the code and

deploy it in the cloud. The cloud provider is responsible for deciding where
to perform the computing. The users are unaware of the computation. In edge
computing, the computation is offloaded from the cloud and the nodes at the edge are
heterogeneous, so the runtimes of these links differ. To address the programmability
issue, a computing stream defined as a series of routines is applied to the data along
with the propagation path. The computing stream can help the user to determine the
function to be done and how the data is propagated after the computing is done at
the edge.
Table 4.1 Comparison of Data Reduction Techniques

Methods Description Advantages Disadvantages
Spatiotemporal [50] Performs online Increased Processing is required
clustering of streaming performance, to be done on the edge
data by relating the including data quality and cloud computing
similarities in time series. and data reduction at least once
Performs temporal data
compression on each of
the network links to
reduce the data.
gZIP [51] Used for data reduction Lightweight and has Compresses one file at
to increase the resource a simple file format, a time, so other
performance and so there is low techniques are used to
efficiency for IP-datasets complexity in increase the
computational terms computation time
AST [44] Used to compress digital Performs its Only works with
signals by stretching and operations using signals
wrapping methods frequency
RED encoding [52] Manages massive and High compression Performance degrades
huge voluminous data rates are used with high variance of
signal
DQC [53] Uses a visual data mining Can expose inner Lacks performance
methodology hidden structures and and requires tools
can signify larger
dimensional data
TNs [54] Uses sensor Reduces feature High complexity
decomposition and spaces
approximation
Naming The naming system is very important for programming, addressing, and
identification, among others. A naming scheme is required to handle the mobility
of things, dynamic network topology, and security issues in edge computing.
Traditional naming systems, such as DNS, are not able to adequately handle
dynamic edge computing. To overcome this issue, new naming mechanisms, such
as named data network (NDN) [55] and MobilityFirst [56], can be deployed in edge
computing. NDN provides a hierarchical structured name for the data network and
is user friendly. MobilityFirst can separate the name from the network address to
provide better mobility support and is efficient when applied to the edge service.
Data Abstraction With the use of IoT, a huge number of data generators are
present in the data network. Human interaction in edge computing should be
reduced; the edge links and nodes should use all the data and interact with the users.
In this case, the data should be pre-processed at the gateway. Collecting the data
will serve the application, and the process should be allowed to control the things
to complete the various services. Combining data representation and operations as
a layer of data abstraction serves as a public interface for all things connected with
the edge operating system.
Service Management To ensure the reliability of a system, the following four

features are required:
1. Differentiation: Multiple services are deployed at the edge network. These
services have different priorities.
2. Extensibility: The things in IoT can be dynamic in nature. A newly owned
thing should easily be added to the current service. In addition, when a thing
is replaced, the previous service should be able to adopt it easily.
3. Isolation: If an application fails in a mobile operating system, the whole system
crashes and needs to be rebooted. In edge computing, this can be tedious
and complicated. This issue can be resolved by introducing a deployment and
undeployment framework.
4. Reliability: The reason for a service failure is sometimes unknown. However,
reliability is required to maintain the network topology of the whole system.
Data sensing and communication also need to be reliable.
For the above issues, some protocols has been implemented for communication
of IoT data [57].
Privacy and Security At the edge of the network, security and privacy are big
issues and challenges. In some cases, intruders may know specifications of the data
and may harm the privacy of the users. Some private information can be removed
from data before processing.
4.10 Conclusion
Today, many devices have been pushed from the cloud to the edge of the network.
When data are processed at the edge, shorter response times and greater reliability
can result. Bandwidth also can be saved when a larger part of data is handled at the
edge rather than uploaded to the cloud. The IoT and mobile devices have driven the
trend of edge computing techniques from data consumer to data producer/consumer,
where it is efficient to compute the data at the edge of the network. This chapter
discussed the basics of edge computing, its various methodologies, and some
data reduction techniques. Finally, we presented some of the challenges of edge
computing and solutions to overcome them, including programmability, naming,
data abstraction, privacy, and security.
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Chapter 5
Applications of the Internet of Things
with the Cloud Computing Technologies:
A Review
U. Ram Jagannath, S. Saravanan, and S. Kanimozhi Suguna
5.1 Introduction to Internet of Things (IoT)
The term “Internet of Things” came into existence from 1999. Internet of Things
has the power to change the world and is a system of interconnection between
uniquely identifiable computing devices and mechanical and digital machines. This
interconnection is made without involving human-to-human or human-to-machine
interaction, and instead the data are transferred over the network. Internet of Things
is a general concept where the devices could gather the data around the world
and could share the data over the network where it could be utilized for various
purposes. Wikipedia states, “The Internet of Things (IoT) is the interconnection
of uniquely identifiable embedded computing devices within the existing Internet
infrastructure”; i.e., it connects the embedded system to the internet. In recent
years, there is an enormous development in the IoT field. Embedded systems are
much attractive because of their low cost, low space, low power consumption, and
autonomous factors. It also includes other factors such as I/O speed and cost, energy
consumption, etc., based on the instructions.
Figure 5.1, obtained from Wikipedia, depicts the technological roadmap for
Internet of Things. From this figure, it can be observed that by 2000, RFID tags
were used to track the routing of the inventory to prevent the loss of logistics. This
paved way for increase in the demand for logistics by providing support for the
supply chain helpers. By the mid of 2000–2010, vertical-market applications such
as surveillance, security, healthcare, transport, food safety, document mapping have
U. Ram Jagannath · S. Saravanan

School of Computing, SASTRA Deemed to be University,
Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, India
S. Kanimozhi Suguna ()
Department of CSE, School of Computing, SASTRA Deemed to be University,

72 U. Ram Jagannath et al.
Technology roadmap: The Internet of Things

Software agents and
Technology Reach
advanced sensor
Miniaturisation, power- fusion
efficient electronics, and
available spectrum
Teleoperation and
telepresence: Ability to
monitor and control
Ability of devices located distant objects Physical-World
indoors to receive Web
geological signals
Locating people and
Cost reduction leading
everyday objects
to diffusion into 2nd Ubiquitous Positioning
wave of applications
Surveillance, security,
healthcare, transport,
Demand for expedited food safety, document
logistics management
Vertical-Market Applications
RFID tags for
tacilitating routing, Source: SRI Consulting Business Intelligence
inventorying, and loss
prevention Supply-Chain Helpers
2000 2010 2020 Time
Fig. 5.1 Technology roadmap: The Internet of Things
seen a great development in technological aspects. This development in vertical-

market applications has led to the progression of ubiquitous computing, in which
the technology helps to locate people and everyday objects. Locating the objects
that reside anywhere even indoors or undergrounds where satellite technologies
may be unavailable or inadequate is called ubiquitous positioning. As a next stage,
the progress is towards the physical-world web for miniaturization, power-efficient
electronics and available spectrum to control distant objects.
Internet of Things could also be defined as the network of sensors where the
data are exchanged under the connectivity using network protocols and systems.
The exchange of data may be bidirectional or unidirectional where any one system
could send or receive data or both.
The organizations or the field of applications which heavily rely on data will
make use of cloud, fog, or edge computing. These computing architectures help in
greatly utilizing the variety of computing techniques, resources that provide data
storage, and these also include the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) [1]. Though
these computing mechanisms sound similar, they form different layers in IIoT.
Figure 5.2 is obtained from (www.winsystems.com); in this image, the authors have
described the layers of IIoT. According to this site, cloud computing (or cloud layer)
is treated as a major layer, and the extended layers of it are edge computing (or edge
layer) and fog computing (or fog layer). These fog and edge layers are a collection
of servers which includes distributed network. These layers help the organization by
giving feasibility; hence, they need not keep the entire infrastructure on their own
premises. This feasibility makes the data to be collected from any place, and it can
also enhance the ability to access data allover. In order to increase the utilization of
end-users and the IIoT devices, recent enterprises are moving towards edge or fog
infrastructure.
5 Applications of the Internet of Things with the Cloud Computing. . . 73
Fig. 5.2 IIoT data processing layer stack
Fog and edge computing look similar in terms of intelligence and also in
the way the data are processed. But they differ in identifying the location of
the intelligence and also in power computation. In edge computing environment,
intelligence is placed in devices like embedded automation controllers, whereas
fog computing environment places intelligence in the local area network (LAN)
itself. For processing the power, fog computing uses edge devices and the gateways
along with the LAN, but in the case of edge, the processing power is placed with
the intelligence. Hence, the most challenging features in this computing are power
consumption, latency, security, and also the data size which can be distributed across
the network.
Older IoT technologies include a virtually infinite number of endpoints con-
nected to the network. Because of this advantage, data collection and processing
has become a biggest challenge. In order to solve this challenge, edge computing
is introduced. The computation processes which are performed at the nodes have
given a feel as if it is performed at the data source itself. Edge computing can also
be stated as an extension of older technologies. The extended features available
in the edge computing are peer-to-peer networking, distributed data, self-healing
network technology, and remote cloud services. Improved hardware security and
also lowering the power requirement are satisfying factors that are provided by the
processors of edge computing systems. This edge computing system also provides a
highly optimal solution as the hardware is embedded with the flash-storage arrays.
The concept of interaction of the centralized system with embedded systems and
industrial gateways is used in fog computing. Much of the data processing of

edge computing is performed directly at the embedded computing platforms by
making an interface with the sensors and controllers. Optimizing resource usage
in a cloud-computing system is one of the advantages provided in edge computing
besides more advantages like reducing network traffic and improved security. The
following subsections explicate the IoT applications along with the concept of cloud
computing.
5.2 IoT Applications
Table 5.1 gives a short description of the IoT applications which will be discussed
in detail.
5.2.1 Infrastructure Management
IoT infrastructure consists of three major parts such as sensing infrastructure,

computing infrastructure, and storage infrastructure. Sensing infrastructure includes
communicating and sensing devices. Computing infrastructure is needed for com-
puting the power consumption and to effectively manage the dynamic loads
from various sensors. Depending upon the user need, this infrastructure has to
be modeled. Traditional storage infrastructure has to be replaced with updated
storage infrastructure in order to satisfy the users, as there is a drastic increase in
the need of sensor. Infrastructure management is needed to monitor and control
the devices in rural and urban area infrastructures. This infrastructure includes
various applications such as bridges, railways, farms, etc. The infrastructure is
controlled by monitoring the change in state of the application devices. If the
device is compromised whenever there is a change in the state of an event, and
if unnoticed will result in high risk. Infrastructure management helps in taking
quick decisions and also in saving money with real-time analytics. It can also
be used to schedule an event like repair and maintenance activities in industry,
which will be performed by coordinating the task between the service providers and
the users. With these facilities, IoT helps in improving quality of service, timely
event handling process, coordinating the responses, and also reducing the cost.
Many fields like manufacturing, agriculture, energy management, environmental
monitoring, building and home automation, metropolitan scale deployments, etc,
are benefitted with this infrastructure management.
Table 5.1 Short description of IoT applications

S.No. Application Description
1 Infrastructure management Controls the operations of urban and mass
infrastructures
2 Industrial IoT Empowers industrial engineering with sensors and big
data analytics to create brilliant machines
3 Smart retail Makes automatic order of the supplies needed for the
living
4 Smart supply chain Notifies the receiver with details of the placed order
5 Transportation and logistics Ensure less accident by providing more rules for
managing vehicles
6 Connected cars Bring in the concept of connecting the cars with the
nearby places
7 Self-parking vehicles Sense the sign symbols around the vehicle and flow to
the parking lot according to the control
8 Smoke detectors An environment that is contaminated by industrial
emission is controlled by using it
9 Smart cities An eco-friendly environment with less pollution and
pollutants
10 Constructions Automated machines to construct buildings by itself for
our well-being
11 Smart homes Assisting household works with the help of IoT
12 Smart panels Contamination of water and other things are saturated
using such devices
13 Energy management Consumption of electricity is majorly sensed and stocks
the extra
14 Smart wearables Get the important appointments done by reminder
which helps in smart living and also reduces industrial
accidents
15 Environment monitoring Senses to assist with human life and wildlife with
natural disaster warnings
16 Biological sensors Used to study DNA and other molecules
17 Healthcare systems Read the body and suggest the health measures to be
added
18 Precision agriculture High demand for quality food is met with the growing
field of IoT
19 Poultry and farming Livestock monitoring is about animal husbandry and
also is cost saving
20 Smart surveillance Stealing personal information has an issue with human
and hence assures security from thieving
The main idea for growing applications is cited by Li Da Xu, Wu He, and Shancang Li, “Internet
of Things in Industries: A Survey”
5.2.2 Industrial IoT (IIoT)
IIoT describes the usage of Internet of Things across several industrial activities like
manufacturing, logistics, metals, and mining and in other sectors. Internet of Things
is a transformative manufacturing technology which improves safety, quality, and

productivity in industries [3]. The main aim of the Industrial Internet of Things is
to have a high output at the rate of same input and to achieve same output in the
cost of low input. All goods and products in the industry are labeled with near field
communication (NFC) tags and radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags which
helps to monitor the goods available in the industry and helps to order goods if it
is insufficient. It also helps to reduce time in searching the specific products in the
industry and also reduces labor cost.
The primary advantages of the Industrial Internet of Things are as follows:
• Predictive maintenance
• Real-time monitoring
• Scalability and time saving
• Resource optimization
The study, The Impact of Connectedness on Competitiveness, is based on a
global survey of 350 executives from large enterprises. It found that more than
half (52%) of executives at large enterprises expect IIoT to have a “significant”
or “major” impact on their industry within 3 years, with another third (32%)
forecasting a “moderate” impact in that timeframe. Security is the major factor for
all industries and everyone is in need to know that their data is well secured. Security
vulnerabilities are highly prevented by using sensors, smart connected devices, and
by other methods.
5.2.3 Smart Retail
IoT brings a number of applications for retailers for improving store operations,
minimizing theft occurrences; increasing customer purchase by selling more num-
ber of the products to them, and also producing a new inventory product [7]. It will
make the customer know everything in the store and aid them closer to the buying
decision. RFID tags are attached to every product in the store, and its availability
is checked periodically. Customers gain the information about the goods through
Bluetooth beacons or other digital receivers. The digital signature will navigate the
customer to the product. The following actions can be performed for improvising
the quality of purchase and make the customer think and take an easy decision
in buying a product. From the analytics, the retailer will know about customer’s
perspectives which will later help in improvising their product according to the
customer’s interest.
• Interactive digital signature screens
• Mobile shopping applications
• Sensor-based items tracking
• Tailored digital marketing
• Optimized inventory management
• Mobile payment solutions

• IoT-enabled beacons
• Customer preferences analytics
For security purposes in the retail shops, multiple video cameras are positioned
within the shop premises at present. Using these cameras, images are captured and
are streamed to the cloud for storage and also for further analysis, if required. These
are implemented for security reasons or can also be used to monitor the customer
behavior within the store. As an extension, it helps the proprietor of the store to keep
an eye on the happenings of the store including the cash flow. For implementing
a secured store, the store is in need of at least one gateway to connect various
equipment with the sensors and also to collect the image data and store it in the
cloud platform. Many companies are working on this issue to give better security to
the retail store.
5.2.4 Smart Supply Chain
IoT supports supply chain management by performing operational efficiencies and

revenue opportunities. The supply chain transparency captures the extent to which
information about the companies, suppliers, and sourcing locations are readily
available to end-users and also to other companies in the supply chain. Security
is the most important aspect that has to be considered. All the information must be
prevented from falling into the wrong hands or being hacked. Sensors should only
send specific information, which must be held in a secure private cloud environment.
Product Tracking RFID and GPS sensors track product from the manufacturing
place to the storage location. They will monitor the product, and hence the
manufacturer can gain granular data like the temperature at which an item is stored
and so on. These data will help in improvising the quality control, on-time deliveries,
and product forecasting.
Vendor Relations Data obtained from product tracking are also helpful to compa-
nies for updating their own production schedules and also recognize the vendor
relationships that may be costing them money. These will test how vendors are
handling supplies and sending goods to the manufacturer. High-quality goods define
a better relationship with customers, and the better customer is retained.
Forecasting and Inventory Another major parameter which is difficult to manage
in the supply chain management is inventory. Smart devices are closely monitored,
and they deal with more variable than earlier applications. Equipment monitoring
provides information about predictive maintenance and alerting engineers for
potential breakdowns and costly disruption. Consider Amazon Go as an example
that uses IoT, computer vision, machine learning, and AI to create a shopping
experience where the user can just walk in, pick up whatever the user needs, and
can walk out with a purchase.
In [15], the authors have proposed a cloud-centric IoT architecture for supply
chain management (SCM). In traditional SCM, the movement of physical objects
was performed directly, whereas, in this paper, the authors have controlled and
coordinated the supply chain process based on object sensing. For implementing
this framework, they have used proposed layers in their framework, namely, object
management, cloud computing platform, information as a service, and smartphone
user. Thirty-one percent of manufacturers are implementing Internet of Things
enhancements to their internal operations, with another 56% exploring doing so
in order to cut operational costs, achieve supply chain efficiencies, and improve
predictive maintenance capabilities. Operations performed with these layers include
submission of request by the user to the cloud; the cloud computing platform will
make response to the user by identifying the location; this cloud computing platform
helps the user to update the data in the database and hence the user can publish the
sensed information; with the received information, the cloud will perform operation
and will return the user about the task which is mapped according to the physical
location of the user; and finally all the transactions and the conversations are stored
to the cloud for future references.
5.2.5 Transportation and Logistics
IoT improves the transportation industry by improving economic development,

public safety, and the environment. IoT monitors the goods and analyses the data
with the help of sensors. Location of the vehicle can be predicted by GPS, roadside
sensors, etc., and finally, the products will be delivered on time, at the right place.
The real-time traffic monitoring is explained in [10]. Some special delivering
vehicles are available to deliver sensitive products, to be stored in a cool place.
Environmental sensors can monitor temperature, humidity, light, and vibration in
real time. These sensors have the capability to detect the occurrence of any problem,
and they are alarmed so that corrective measures can be taken to prevent spoiling of
goods. The data that are collected from different sensors are massive in size to be
stored in the cloud. Safety and security is the main reason for the development of
the transportation industry with IoT. Thus, there is no loss of goods, and hence
they are transported to the destined place without any damage. By maximizing
the profitability and viability, the efficiency of the supply chain is improved in
transportation and logistics field. With the improved development in the fields of
mobile technology and IoT, the enterprises are connecting the transportation- and
logistics-related devices with the centralized cloud network to gain information
about the real-time operations in transportation and logistics by capturing and
sharing the information about the critical data. The information about the critical
data is shared in to make sure that the right product is delivered to the right place
at the right time. This paves way for the development in various fields such as asset
management, cloud, mobile, and big data.
5.2.6 Connected Cars
Internet of Things paves a great and fresh way for the car manufacturers to upgrade
their cars in a highly competitive market. As stated in [2] by Kevin Ashton, this
also enhances the idea, where a person can drive around the world and can stay
connected all the time. Before the invention of IoT in automobiles, one has to search
for the route manually, while the IoT has made it more convenient. For example, a
person could set the destination place using Ground Positioning Systems (GPS),
and the driver will be directed to the destination place and this also needs some
improvements.
Auto-pilot mode is the most modern technology introduced in recent times. High-
resolution cameras can be used to detect soft and hard objects in the lane and also in
the vehicle surroundings. Forward-facing radar with enhanced processing collects
additional data about the world on a redundant wavelength that helps the user to
see through heavy rain, fog, dust, and even the car behind and ahead. This could
also aid in detecting the traffic signals and signs that are already inbuilt in the
system and could drive the car as safe as possible. It can also adapt to the changes
in the environmental roads around the world, and it could also offer lane change
automatically. IHS Markit predicts that more than 70 million connected cars will be
on the road by 2023.
Designing a connected vehicle platform on cloud IoT core will be a better
solution for managing the connected cars by making a use of cloud IoT core on
Google Cloud Platform (GCP). The use cases that can be defined by making a
combination with data storage and platforms are usage-based insurance, predictive
maintenance, freight tracking, and customized in-vehicle experience. The main
challenges that a development team will face in this domain are device management,
data ingestion, data analytics, applications, and predictive models. Besides these
challenges, the developer must also focus on security and set the boundary level for
the applications they design that are implemented in the cloud-based system.
5.2.7 Self-Parking Vehicles
Self-driving cars are learned from the data cloud, the collections of data are brakes,
tire and transmission performance, fuel consumption, and efficiency of the vehicle.
The main reason for self-driving is high safety, and it will abide all traffic rules
and regulation as shown in [5]. Averagely, parking coverage takes 31% of land use
in big cities, like San Francisco, and even more, 81% in Los Angeles and 76%
in Melbourne, while at the lower end we find New York (18%), London (16%),
and Tokyo (7%). Hence, the removal of unnecessary parking areas is the first task
for municipalities to create a better urban planning. The data are provided with
high security, and the hackers cannot access the data easily without the user’s
authorization. There exists confusion when the user tries parking his or her vehicle,
and it leads to great pressure and stress to the user which also results in waste of
time. As self-driving vehicle is automatically parked in the parking area without any
confusion it reduces pressure as well as the time for user. IoT predicts the current
scenario and performs the action according to the problem.
In [16], the authors have designed a smart parking system. In this system, the
authors have specified that the system can be implemented for any type of parking
like parking available at covered parks, open parks, and also street side parking. For
this system, the authors have designed an architecture which includes cloud service
provider. The main function of this cloud service provider is to collect information
about the parking area and store the information in the cloud. The major components
of this smart parking system are centralized server, Raspberry Pi, image capturing
device, a navigation system, displaying device, and the user device. The centralized
server acts as a database that will hold the entire information about the parking
system, some of the information includes a number of parking slots, availability of
vehicles, and so on. Raspberry Pi is a microcontroller used to implement the parking
system with a camera attached to it. This Pi-camera is used to capture pictures of the
parking area for validating the area to check the availability of slots in that area. The
main role of the navigation system is to navigate the users to the available parking
lot which is nearer to his or her current location. Displaying device is a monitor or
tab available at the admin’s location to monitor the device and to modify the parking
lot if needed. The user device is used to connect the user with the parking system
using their smartphones or browsers.
5.2.8 Smoke Detectors
Safety of life is more important when compared to any other application. Records
show that many lives were exploited by fire accidents, and also it takes a longer
duration for the fire service to reach the destination. To avoid these types of
accidents, many companies are using IoT devices for safety. It is safe in many ways
as it is more evident that if fire accident occurs, it automatically connects itself to
the hot-connect or cloud environment and it directly sends a voice or text message
to the concerned fire agency. The working principle is not like the normal smoke
detectors which could only give beeping alarm sounds but it also helps to save
people. This has battery power that is estimated to last up to 10 years and also it
is not a big bottleneck to change the battery. It is more rapidly replacing the normal
smoke detectors as this proves to be more useful and also available at an affordable
cost. One thousand smoke detector surveys were mailed, covering about 70 percent
of the town’s households. While the results staggered in over a period of 3 months,
315 completed surveys (31.5 percent) were ultimately returned. The high return rate
can be interpreted as a strong interest on the part of the public concerning fire safety.
In the industrial sector, the smoke detectors play a different role, where it is used
as the contamination detector. The detector is placed at the chimney and monitors
the smoke that is being passed out through it. If the contaminants are greater than
the recommended level, it will send a warning message to the main supervisor and
also to the concerned person so that it will never be ignored. It ensures green living
to all the people and greatly reduces pollution.
5.2.9 Smart Cities
As described by Gauer, A., Smart City Architecture and its applications based on
IoT in [4], smart cities improve the quality of lifestyle by improving infrastructures
like delivering clean water, dependable power, and efficient public lighting. The
main motive of a smart city is to provide more efficient water supply, an innovative
solution to traffic congestion, and more reliable public transportation. Water can be
highly saved by providing the following facilities.
• Leakage detection in pipes
• Wastewater recycling
• Managing the storm-water
The benefits of the smart city include increased safety, reduced traffic, lower
levels of pollution, more efficient use of energy, and improve the overall quality of
life for future city dwellers. The main aim of the smart cities is extended to keep the
citizens safe, and it should provide education and technological job opportunities to
the citizens with open innovation. Gujarat International Finance Tec-City stands as
a great example for smart cities. It has better city planning and development, and
internet facility is provided all over the city with a faster supply of products at a
lower operating expense. The major issue stands in the contamination of air, and to
resolve this issue many green buildings are set up.
The companies which focus on security management can be connected with
smoke detectors so that they can protect the buildings from fire. The device will
send the message to the cloud-based dashboard only if the fire is detected or if
the system is in need of maintenance. This will greatly reduce the man-hours in
performing the maintenance check frequently, and even the process may not be
needed. These connected smoke detectors are more advantageous when compared
to the traditional system. These smoke detectors can be connected to devices such
as desktops, laptops, tablets or smart-phones to get alert messages which proves
helpful for fire security personnel.
5.2.10 Construction
The main problem faced by a worker in a construction industry is misplacing the

equipment at the construction sites which leads to time consumption in searching the
equipment or may cause any damage to the equipment. IoT keeps on monitoring the
equipment by sensors by GPS tracking attached to the equipment. RIFD tags will be
attached to the devices so that tracking can be made easy. The cost of the equipment
is comparably higher than earlier devices. This will help the consumer to buy the
equipment only once in a lifetime, instead of purchasing frequently whenever it is
missed. Repair and service of the equipment can be monitored, and the problem
could be resolved with a warning alert from the equipment. Energy consumption
by the equipment can be minimized by the sensors which will adjust the actions
to be performed by the tools automatically. The sensors will automatically switch
on/off to save energy. The main advantage is the quality work is increased and
more convenient for users. The construction project work can be done on time,
and the quality of the construction can be improved. The future Internet of Things
will provide intelligent building management systems which can be considered as
a part of a much larger information system used by facilities managers in buildings
to manage energy use and energy procurement and to maintain efficient building
management systems.
5.2.11 Smart Homes
Google is highly potential and develops automation in everything. As everything in

the home is well organized and fully computerized, they are all controlled simply
with a mobile application which leads to controlling and monitoring the devices that
are installed in the home [17]. The devices that are using electricity can be added to
the network. Smart homes also provide high security which prevents hackers from
penetration.
Several companies have developed smart appliances which include smart fridges,
televisions, and air conditioners. For example, Nest is an automated thermostat
which senses the temperature and adjusts the air conditioner to the favorable means,
i.e., if the external temperature is high, it lowers the internal temperature and vice
versa which makes the people comfortable. In [12], the authors describe the privacy
and security challenges in smart homes.
In [18], the authors have designed a smart home in such a way that the device
will record the daily activities inside the home and store the information in the cloud
storage. The device will get familiar with this information, and hence at a later
stage, the device will do the similar operations without the requirement of human
intervention.
5.2.12 Smart Panels
A smart panel can perform multiple functions like tracking the electrical usage and
wastage in a detailed manner, and it also displays the result on the computer screen.
They are simple, flexible, and have an open architecture which proves that they
are simple in construction and implementation. Using these applications, the user
can remotely access the electrical units which are installed far away which help in
reducing the electrical energy.
Another type is smart solar panels, and these have multiple abilities which could
perform different actions depending on the conditions required. For example, this
panel can be used to convert solar energy into electrical energy or to the required
form of energy in which it acts as a transducer in one form and it could convert air
into drinking water from the sunlight and air in another form. All the installed panels
are monitored by the organization. The purity and taste of the water are obtained
by adding the required minerals to it. It is connected and so it provides optimized
performance. It could provide an average of 8–20 bottles of water per day. The
main advantage of using these panels is they need not be hooked up to the home’s
electrical systems, and they use full renewable resources to gain energy.
5.2.13 Energy Management
Energy is a very important aspect for any household, industries, agriculture, and
so on. Managing energy source and conserving it for better performance is a
challenging task. IoT paradigm promises to increase the visibility and awareness
of energy consumption, thanks to smart sensors and smart meters at the machine
and production line level. Since every appliance depends on energy supply, energy
plays a vital role in day-to-day life. An interface like Arduino Microcontrollers
controls the usage of an appliance like the intensity of light and the speed of
the fan. Humidity, temperature, and light intensity are taken into consideration in
developing a better IoT system for energy management. IoT devices are controlled
and connected for small cities and communities, transportation systems, buildings,
lighting systems, factories, and more devices. Building Energy Management Sys-
tems (BEMs) attracted $1.4 B in VC Funding from 2000 to 2014 (26% of all
investment in building energy technology). In 2020, about 77% of the $2.14 billion
US market will comprise BEMS applications, and 40% will come from buildings
below 50,000 square feet. The US market for sensors and controls for BEMs will
rise at a 17% compound annual growth rate to $2.14 billion in 2020. Possible future
directions for energy management are as follows:
• Energy-efficient mechanisms for software-defined IoT solutions, which can
provide scalable and context-aware data and services.
• Fog computing can lead to energy saving for most of the IoT applications;
therefore, it is important to study energy consumption of fog devices for IoT
applications.
5.2.14 Smart Wearables
Wearable devices are considered as the hot topic these days. A reduced job is much
preferred in every field which resulted in this technology. Some of the important
functions to be considered for a smart wearable in the industrial location is it could
sense cut-off radiation level and will alert the user when the environment becomes
worse.
Health- and fitness-related devices are also available these days which could
monitor the heartbeat rate, blood pressure, footsteps count, sleep monitor, etc. Some
of the useful features are it could find the body temperature by which the user could
get an early indication of cold or flu. Most of the users have a question why to
use a wearable gadget while a single smartphone could do all these work. It is
not comfortable to take our smartphone for every transaction, but the smartphone
will act as the central unit of the wearable by connecting it through Bluetooth or
the network which grants access for the wearable to surf the data available in the
smartphone.
Further, wearable reduces manual work to a great extent where the devices in
the home are being connected and the user can control any of the devices which
are connected in the same network without requiring any movement from place to
place.
5.2.15 Environmental Monitoring
The main application of IoT in the environmental monitoring is weather forecasting

and monitoring, protecting endangered species, water safety, and many more
applications. Current weather forecasting and monitoring applications include the
need for the labor work, but implementing IoT in this field greatly reduces this effort.
Sampling is done at regular intervals, and it helps to prevent contamination of air in
many stages. IoT allows deep monitoring of weather in a specific range of area using
IoT installed with radar. This promises more fine-grained data with great accuracy
and range. This helps in early detection and early warning which reduces the loss
of life and property [11]. Low-power, wide-area network (LPWAN) technology is
perfectly suited for environmental monitoring, as it can connect devices that need
to stay in the field for an extended period of time and send small amounts of data
over a long range. There are a number of reasons you may want to select LPWAN
technology for your IoT environmental monitoring:
• Long battery life
• Low cost
• Long range
• Satellite backhaul ability
5.2.16 Biological Sensors
Biosensors are gaining more interest nowadays, and they promise to be one of
the constant growing fields in IoT [9]. Biosensors are mainly used in the field
of healthcare, applications related to sports, and mostly in the military. The main
advantage of this application is low cost and also provides real-time information.
The term “wearable biosensors” (WBS) is evolved by combining both the smart
wearable and the biosensors in a single unit. The required sensors are installed in
the various parts of the body so they could be monitored all the time, without any
whatsoever disturbances. Their size will be very small which makes them easy to
carry wherever the user moves. Based on the usage of such sensors, these devices
are popularly named as immunosensors, glucometers, biocomputers, etc., some of
the examples include (1) Google lens (2) ring sensor and (3) smart shirt.
5.2.17 Healthcare Systems
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 31 percent of global deaths

are due to cardiovascular diseases (estimated 17.7 million people in 2015). The
number of people with diabetes has been rapidly increasing from 108 million in
1980 to 422 million in 2014. The rising cost of healthcare services has increased
the need for providing effective and efficient healthcare to the patients in most of
the developing countries. Internet of Things stands as the key component for the
digital transformation of healthcare systems. Internet of Healthcare Things (IoHT)
and Internet of Medical Things are considered to be the two most important parts of
healthcare systems which include smart pills, smart personal healthcare, and real-
time health systems. This is mainly designed for those who do not find time to
spend on their health life, whereas here they could easily check their health issues
with easy IoT healthcare systems. This is not only suitable for an individual but easy
for everyone to register with their health issues and get appropriate remedy, and also
this initiative will reduce spending money for a periodical check-up.
IoT-based healthcare for the elderly is the cheapest and more efficient way for
applications related to healthcare. ECG, heartbeat rate, and body moisture can easily
be found using this application. Appointment of the doctors can be made and it will
also help in periodical indication for the pills at right time. Healthcare IoT systems
ensure some basic ideas that can now be used to monitor the patient remotely, but in
future, it will surely be an important member in the healthcare industry to maintain
the healthcare and its related activities. The health records of the users are collected
and are stored in electronic healthcare records (EHR) which makes the past data as
well as the present data to be readily available at any time. While considering the
security of the personal health records, IoT considers this as sensitive data and has
some stricter rules that should be followed. Genetic materials and other personal
details are stored in a private environment.
In [13], the authors have proposed a device named Cellcon. This device is
developed based on the image analysis concept which is portable and also affordable
to do the process. This is a hardware device with a ball lens and a mobile application.
The authors designed this application to do the cell count and to identify the
presence of the malarial parasite. The blood sample is collected in a slide and a photo
is taken by a ball lens that is attached to the phone clip, and hence a magnified image
of the blood sample is obtained. This IoT device uses cloud storage for storing the
image data, retrieve the data, and perform the analysis through and from the internet.
The image is compared with the images in the database and the results are sent to
the patient. In this application, the first half of the application, i.e., collecting the
blood sample and taking a photo, is performed at the patient’s location. The patient
may reside at any remote location, and the image data will be passed via the internet.
The doctor will analyze the image data using the application which is installed in
his mobile, and this belongs to the second phase of the application.
5.2.18 Precision Agriculture
Precision agriculture makes rapid changes in the agricultural sector, and numerous
organizations are leveraging this technique around the world. IoT makes agriculture
field highly efficient. CropMetrics is a precision agricultural organization con-
centrated on ultra-modern agronomic solutions. Wireless sensor network (WSN)
and wireless moisture sensor network (WMSN) are used in IoT. WSN technology
contains many sensors, which are used to monitor and control to do proper irrigation.
This optimization will maximize the profitability of irrigated crop fields, improves
yields, and increases water usage efficiently. Agricultural drones are applied to
farming in order to help increase crop production and monitor crop growth. Through
the use of advanced sensors and digital imaging capabilities, farmers are able to
use these drones to help them gather a richer picture of their fields. An advantage
of drones is crop health, convenient to use, and increase in yield production. IoT
reduces the human intervention in farming. Today’s sophisticated commercial farms
have exploited advanced technologies; however, IoT introduces more access to
deeper automation and analysis.
In [14], the authors have projected the problems faced by the farmers in the
real world. The farmers will be holding the agricultural land which is measured
in hectares, and it is highly difficult for the farmers to identify the infected crop that
is spread out in a vast area. Besides these criteria, the farmers also face certain other
issues like rainfall prediction, climate, availability of water, and so on. Also, the
farmers are not ready to cultivate different or hybrid crops in their land, as they lack
knowledge and less experience in this scenario. In order to support the farmers in
these conditions, a sensor device can be placed in the soil that is used for monitoring
the climatic changes, temperature, and even soil moisture. The data observed by the
sensors are stored with the help of cloud storage; this stored information will be used
in future for analyzing and predicting the soil status and also about the feasible crop
which can be cultivated with the existing soil and weather conditions. This concept
of implementing cloud will aid in the expansion of data storage, and this will greatly
reduce the production cost.
5.2.19 Poultry and Farming
IOT is an innovative technology that provides modern and automated poultry farm-
ing. Basic environment parameters for poultry farming are temperature, humidity,
ammonia gas, and water level. For instance, the temperature is controlled by cooling
fan, humidity is monitored by the exhaust fan, ammonia gas is examined by
ventilation window open, and the water level is maintained by DC motor. These
actions are performed by the sensor, and monitoring is done the whole day. These
are done mainly for the growth and health of the chicken. Farming challenges caused
by population growth and climate change have made it one of the first industries to
utilize the IoT in this sector.
5.2.20 Smart Surveillance
The major issue in the secured environment is to safeguard our buildings, assets, and
so on [8]. The basic alarm facilities of earlier days had high visibility and later on
introduced a monitoring camera which has some less scope of treatment. Internet of
Things helps to create smart homes and smart cities by adding a feature of real-time
monitoring services to the environment which concerns more about the security by
the use of smart surveillance and security [6].
To make it simpler, let us consider that the user uses network cameras to
monitor the area under surveillance and high-resolution cameras for the places of
large crowd movement. IoT will offer a greater solution to such disparate things
by considering the above scenarios by combining the video surveillance cameras
and smoke detectors into a “small and single glass pane.” As all the devices will
be monitored over a network, they could share data among them and could take
decisions by themselves by which the security will be enhanced.
The images produced by the video surveillance cameras should have high clarity,
and this would be true by adopting Internet of Things. Nowadays, megapixel
technology has grown to its peak by incorporating them with low-lighting cameras
which are now blooming successor of the present market. These are all concerned
with the wide dynamic range (WDR) of cameras. IoT offers a resolution of at least
three times greater, and even 4 k videos could be generated using IoT.
5.3 Conclusion
There are many benefits that arise with the increased use of Internet of Things. IoT is
used in our everyday life as it greatly reduces the cost and power. Hence, this chapter
has given an overview of applications using IoT. IoT has the potential to drive
integrated solutions that can make a difference. The entire world is transforming
slowly with the use of IoT in daily life. Also, the people are getting ample
opportunities to enhance their commitments and perform various activities using
smart things. This chapter has given a short description of various applications that
are implemented with IoT and also certain challenges faced in those applications.
Research work can be extended in the challenges faced and giving increased security
to the applications to provide the better, smart and secured environment.
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Chapter 6
Software-Defined Internet of Things
to Analyze Big Data in Smart Cities
Sadia Din, Awais Ahmad, Anand Paul, and Gwanggil Jeon
6.1 Introduction
With the use of the ICT, which is one of the fascinating technologies, not only people
are connected with each other but also now things are connected with everything.
Accessibility to all kind of services is made so easy. Health, transportation, emer-
gency response, shopping, utilities, economy, weather, etc., are the main services
which are available through the ICT. Some researchers, including the authors of
this chapter, referred these services as smart services. Smart cities concept also
originated because of advancements in ICT research and inventions. The generation
of data is very high these days as IBM reports that approximately 90% of the data
is generated in the last 2 years [1]. Many research organizations have now started
research on big data and related topics because of this fact. Big data consists of
large sets of data which can be mainly identified through “5Vs” (initially, it was
referred to as “3Vs”; two have been added recently): volume (size of dataset), variety
(range of data type and source), velocity (speed of data in and out), value (how
useful the data is), and veracity (quality of data) [2]. Because of its complexity in
processing, big data becomes more challenging. The conventional network obtained
great success by adopting a hierarchical paradigm. Anyway, the closed systems
of network devices in smart cities, we have to configure many devices with high
S. Din · A. Paul ()

School of Computer Science and Engineering, Kyungpook National University, Daegu, South
Korea
A. Ahmad
Department of Computer Science, Bahria University, Islamabad, Pakistan
G. Jeon
Department of Embedded Systems Engineering, Incheon National University, Incheon, South
Korea

92 S. Din et al.
complexity when business requirements change. The researchers also cannot deploy
new protocols in the real environment especially when we are focusing on a plethora
of embedded devices.
It has been expected that the internet growth will increase to very high end, that
is, 1.6 × 1021 B [3]. In order to cope with this challenge, a greater bandwidth will be
required by users so they can access any services with good speed. The stability of
network will also be required. Almost half decade ago, the abovementioned issues
led Nick McKeown to present Open Flow [4] and based on Open Flow, the concept
of software-defined networking (SDN) was presented in [5]. Where SDN is based on
the idea of detaching the control plane from the forwarding plane, to break vertical
integration, and to introduce the dynamic network and with the ability to program
it. The SDN allows logical centralization of feedback control, and decisions are
made by the “network brain” with a global network view, which eases network
optimization. The data plane elements become highly efficient and programmable
in the SDN system with packet forwarding devices, and the control plane elements
are represented by a single entity, the controller. In conventional networks, it is
much easier to develop and deploy applications in SDN. Also, with the global view
in SDN, it is straightforward to enforce the consistency of network policies. SDN
represents a major paradigm shift in the evolution of networks, introducing a new
pace of innovations in networking infrastructure.
6.2 A Brief Overview of the SDN and Big Data Roles in the
Development of Smart Cities
Three main advantages of the SDN architecture are as follows: (1) The SDN’s
open architecture guarantees the centralized control and automatic management of
networks. SDN allows network engineers to design, deploy, operate, and maintain
networks using a centralized SDN controller rather than configure a lot of hetero-
geneous devices. (2) The SDN can provide various open APIs to flexible program
networks. The network operating system and network applications can be deployed
on servers that adopt X86 architecture and can control data forwarding by Open
Flow. (3) The SDN architecture decouples the data plane and the control plane by
using Open Flow and virtualized networks. A network becomes a logical resource
that can be configured through software. The core idea of SDN has been used in the
field of routers to build an open, flexible, and modularized reconfigurable router [6].
While some excellent work has been done on big data and SDN, these two important
areas have conventionally been addressed separately in most of the previous works.
However, on the one hand, SDN, is an important networking paradigm, will have
a significant impact on big data applications. Several good features, for example,
separation of the control and data planes, logically centralized control, global view
6 Software-Defined Internet of Things to Analyze Big Data in Smart Cities 93
of the network, and ability to program the network, are associated with it. For
example, big data is usually processed in cloud data centers. Compared to traditional
data centers, SDN-based data centers can have better performance by dynamically
allocating resources in data centers to different big data applications to meet the
service-level agreements (SLAs) of these big data applications [7–19].
On the other hand, big data is an important network application which has a
profound impact on the design and operation of SDN. Specifically, with the global
view of the network, the logically centralized controller in SDN can obtain big data
from all the different layers (i.e., from physical to application layers) with arbitrary
granularity.
Experience shows in cross-layer design that sharing information among different
layers can improve network performance, the network becomes so complex that
conventional methods are unsuitable to design and optimize such networks. Luckily,
big data analytics, which leverages analytical methods to obtain insights from data
to guide decisions, can help the design and operation of SDN, for example, with big
traffic data analytics, it is easier for the controller to perform traffic engineering to
improve the performance of SDN.
This research proposes the integration of programmable devices with IoT (SDN-
IoT) to provide a variety of big data applications for smart cities followed by
the potentials of SDN in building smart cities. The proposed paradigm starts
with data gathering process from various smart city–enabling technologies such as
smart homes, smart grids, intelligent transportation system (ITS), weather forecast
intelligent systems, and so on. After the data aggregation as a second level,
we present a detailed data processing and management (DPM) level where big
data analysis has been used to filter the useful data. We also have evaluated the
performance of our architecture using Hadoop ecosystem. On top of DPM, we have
also identified the applications level along with varying data flow that is supported
by our evaluated big data architecture. In this, we have considered the future
internet architecture recently named as named data networking (NDN) also known
as content-centric networking (CCN) at the application level. This chapter, finally,
provides open issues that provide a roadmap to follow by the active researchers in
the said domain.
6.3 Proposed Scheme System Architecture for SDIoT
This section presents details of the proposed novel layered architecture which
support high-performance computing for SDIoT and also help to design the system
completely. The proposed system architecture consists of four multilevel with the
objective to enhance the current capacity of storing and the speed of processing. At
each layer, various tasks are supported by the reading and writing capabilities.
94 S. Din et al.
Data Collection Unit
SDN Application SDN Application SDN Application

Smart Home E-Health Services ITS
Vehicular Network Weather forecast others
A X
A
Aggregator B Aggregator Y
A
C Z
A
Data Processing Unit
Mappers Reducers
Useful
Filtration
information
HDFS HBase
A X
A
Aggregator B Aggregator Y
A
C Z
A
Data Application Unit

Decision nodes
Events
Decisions
High Level Low Level
Intelligent
Response
Transportation
System
System
Fig. 6.1 Proposed internet of software-defined system architecture for smart cities
6.3.1 Proposed System Architecture
The method of execution flow in the proposed system is done in various levels,
mainly three major levels and two intermediate support levels. Various embedded
units or devices transmit data to the data processing level using standard networking
technologies. During this communication, data is also received by the respective
users who need it for their various jobs. Figure 6.1 shows the flow diagram of the
proposed system architecture.
6.3.1.1 Data Collection and Intermediate Levels
In a smart city, few services are considered for data loading and collection pur-
pose, for example, related medical data, public transportation, population, general
facilities, etc. Normally sensors connect these services for the efficient data loading
and collection. The data is communicated between layers through system ways,
that is, data is passed to the upper levels using the first Intermediate level. The
sensed data is transmitted through the aggregator points (AP) which are attached to
sensors. To reduce the congestion, the APs are further classified into three levels,
that is, zone, local, and global APs. These zone levels take the responsibility of
loading high detail information from each unit in the smart city. The local level
AP (LLAP) is the n charge for aggregating sensor data from similar units such
as medical hospital of online health services, transportation data from roads, etc.
Finally, the global level AP (GLAP) eventually collects data from the LLAP and
send it to the SDN core network. The SDN core network uses the SDN controller to
map the traffic received from the GLAP over the network. The controller is designed
to perform many useful functions, for example, to differentiate sensed data based on
the sensor IDs, topology control, optimizes the duty cycle of sensors attached with
each AP, routing decision based on the user requirements. The SDN-enabled router
using a priority application table to determine application-specific routing of data.
In a typical scenario, under the IoT, many thousands of devices are interconnected
for various services to produce high volume data. It is certain that because of the
congestion, the network operation will slow down. The literature shows a number
of methods developed by different researchers to identify congestion level on any
given link. For example, Kandula in [20] developed a method based on a predefined
threshold. It is suggested and proposed that up to 70% capacity used link can be
declared as a congested link. A similar predefined threshold with 75% of link usage
approach is adopted in this research. In order to efficiently transfer big data over
SDN, the design should mention a constraint of this work. Therefore, the current
traffic engineering technique available in the literature has been adopted to enhance
the performance of the SDN. An outstanding suggestion will be given to use/choose
a traffic engineering mechanism for controlling and routing traffic over an SDN. One
example would be to use high-speed processing switches and routers because of the
high volume data generated through the sensors in an IoT environment. The poll-
and push-based methods are used by SDN controller to obtain useful information
about the link (as mentioned above) statistics from switches. It is generally believed
that poll based is a slower method as compared to the push-based mechanisms.
Because of this feature, push-based method can be used for high-speed data routing
and switching. Chen in [21] proposed double-level congestion handling schemes
which are useful to be implemented. Chen in his work proposed that the SDN
controller maintains a global view of the whole network by getting information of
links from each switch in the SDN. This information is further used to control the
load on each link in the network.
96 S. Din et al.
Table 6.1 Data collection of FV Time SensorID1 SensorID2 ... SensorIDn

specific block
F1 t1 X1 (1) X2 (1) ... Xn (1)
F1 t2 X1 (2) X2 (2) ... Xn (2)
... ... ... ... ... ...
Fn tm X1 (m) X2 (m) ... Xn (m)
Algorithm 6.1: Data Collection

Begin:
IF Data: = Required Data
Aggregate ()
ELSE
Partition Dataset into Blocks BL and BR
Aggregate BL
Aggregate BR
Merge BL and BR
END IF
END
Table 6.1 shows the data aggregation in general, where data of the particular
block is aggregated at different time intervals (e.g., t0 , t1 , . . . tm ) based on
sensorIDs.
FV is a specific attribute called factor variable. The FV is used to represent a
particular attribute of the data block by which the noise is detected and discarded
during data filtration process. The data is in raw and not complied; therefore, in the
first instance the data is sent to the preprocessing stage to the data management and
processing level which are explained as follows:
6.3.1.2 Data Management and Processing Level
To convert data to a meaningful form, the data received from the intermediate
level 1 is sent to data processing level for normalization purposes. The normalized
data is useful for the user to make a decision such as a road congestion data is
useful for the commutator to make a decision to reach the destination as quick as
possible and using a short route. As mentioned earlier that high processing power
would require processing high volume data. Conventional computational methods
are always challenged while processing real-time data. The latest technology such
as Hadoop ecosystem and GraphX and SPARK are deployed by the data processing
level in this kind of situation (real-time data processing). Further other capabilities
of the Hadoop system such as HDFS and heterogeneous cluster Hadoop system
are also used for processing, storing, and manipulation tasks related to huge data.
The current literature abounds with many techniques to assign job to the Hadoop
cluster system. In real-time processing, a division of huge jobs to sub job will be
required through a proper scheduling mechanism a map-reduce part. After loading
sub job to map-reduce system, the system allows to alter the number of jobs easily
(if required). Therefore, an adaptive (intelligent) job scheduling technique is used in
this research to adjust the load on the map-reduce system dynamically. A job tracker
is assigned to each job which uses two different parameters to switch the part of the
job from the current state to another state such as from processing unit to memory
or any other part of the system. The change of sub job from one state to another state
is executed in real-time environment and total based on the amount of a load of a
cluster. This is not a big challenge in Hadoop system environment. However, fixed
job assignment does not produce optimize results heterogeneous Hadoop clusters
systems.
The proposed system (scheduling mechanism) provides a solution to two main
problems because of the fixed job assignment, that is, (1) a high-performance node
remains in the idle state and (2) a low-performance mode always remains in the
busy state. This trade-off between high- and low-performance mode makes the
system unstable for heterogeneous Hadoop clusters. In the proposed system, our
developed job scheduling strategy checks the load on each node at runtime. A node
always automatically demands new jobs, if its current workload is dropped from the
threshold value of 75% of its total link capacity. During each cycle, the proposed
scheduler checks the existing load of each node and loads new jobs accordingly.
Hence, it optimizes the total capacity of a node by incorporating the load parameter
during a single turn. The output of the map-reduce system is also passed to HDFS
system for storing and other required operations.
Rules Definition Various threshold values which are a threshold limit lalue (TLV)
are defined and set for evaluation of the datasets after the completion of the
preprocessing stage. It is understood that TLVs are set for every dataset, for example,
fire detection function, water consumption, etc. Normally TLVs are specific numeric
values to represent some function as discussed above, for instance, 90% pollution,
etc. Along with the TLV, certain rules are also defined to make a decision when that
value is met or surpassed.
Algorithm 6.2: Rules Definition using IF/THEN
Rules Definition
Begin:
IF Traffic_Data > TLV
Traffic Congestion ()
IF Temp > TLV
Fire_Detected
// and so forth
END
Algorithm 6.2 is used to define rules where TLV is the specifically defined
threshold limit value and Temp are the temperatures.
Message Queue After the definition of rules, the rules and data are stored system-
ically in the message queue (MQ). Using MQ mechanism offers some advantages
that do not necessitate an instant reaction to carry on the processing. It also avoids
delay and halts during the processing. The working mechanism of the MQ is very
straightforward by receiving M message at time t; the MQ takes action accordingly.
Figure 6.2 shows the handler H which is handling the overall process in this regard.
98 S. Din et al.
Fig. 6.2 Queue mechanism

in SDN tn Message Queue (MQ)
Mn M1, M2, … M3 H
Fig. 6.3 M/M/1 queuing

model for SDN D0
μ λ
D1
Dn-1
Dn
Dn+1
The proposed architecture has used basic M/M/1 queuing model because of its
efficient functioning wherein M/M/1 model system (e.g., S system) is in a stable
state if coming rate of the messages (data values) is less than the required service
rate. This mechanism, which is used in the proposed architecture, is shown in
Fig. 6.3 with the communication from one data item of the dataset to another. The
mathematical process of the M/M/1 mechanism is illustrated as follows:
D0 and D1 are maintained balance with each other which is required during
steady state, hence for D2 , D3 , . . . Dn−1 , Dn , Dn+1 , such as:
λD0 = μD1
λD1 = μD2
λD2 = μD3
...
λDn−1 = μDn
λ µ
Waiting Area Service Data
After the abovementioned analysis, the following equation is obtained by

rearranging the abovementioned equations:
n n
λ λ
Dn = Dn−1 = D0 (6.1)
μ μ
The overall probability which is known to be equal to 1, we get the following

equations:
∞
Di = 1
j =0
1 2 3
λ λ λ
D0 1 + + + +... =1
μ μ μ
The abovementioned process and equation yield the sum of geometric series,
therefore,
λ
D0 = 1 −
μ
The utilization can be D = 1 − D0 , thus

λ
D =1− 1−
μ
λ
D=
μ
By applying values in Eq. (6.1), we get

n
λ
Dn = D0 ⇒ (D)n (1 − D)
μ
Dn = S n ( 1 − D)
The system has j number of tasks to perform, then

∞ ∞ d ∞
M= j.Dj = j.D n (1 − D) = (1 − D) D Dj
j =0 j =0 dD j =0

d 1 1
M= ( 1 − D) D =
dD 1−D 1−D
The average stay of job/task in a system is
N D 1 1
T = = . =
λ 1−D λ μ−λ
100 S. Din et al.
Similarly, the average number of tasks in the queue is

Mq = M – tasks in services
D D2 λ2
Mq = M − Tasks = .S = =
1−D 1−D (μ − λ)μ
Waiting time in queue becomes
1 1 1 λ
Wq = T − = − =
μ μ−λ μ (μ − λ)μ
Similarly, the average number of jobs/tasks in the queue is
D D2
M= =S+
1−D 1−D
6.3.1.3 Application Level
The SDN receives data from the HDFS system at the application level via interme-
diate level 2 (IL2). There is no difference between the working of the IL2 and IL1
except for the level of the traffic is different on the SDN is less compared to IL1. The
application level consists of two parts: (1) event and decision management and (2)
named data network (NDN). In the event and decision module, an event is generated
based on the data from the data and processing level. The result, that is, the event is
communicated to the concerned departments to be processed for the respective user.
The management module divides generated event into two groups, that is, high-
and low-level events. As it is clear from the name that the high-level events are
the most important events and processed on a priority basis where the other (low-
level events) are saved in the decision module until a notification is sent back to
the data processing level. After the proper acknowledgment and notification by the
various required modules such as decision management module, it is processed and
discarded. To fully understand the process of the event and decision module, it is
explained through a comprehensive scenario.
Consider an example of a situation of the city where the city collects the data
of a road congestion level. The data is communicated to the event and decision
module. If the communicated data is more than the level of the predefined threshold
which will be considered as a high-level event by the decision module and relevant
messages are sent to the concerned department. On the other hand (e.g., the
congestion level is less than the threshold value), the event is discarded after proper
notification. During this process, all users will also be informed about the situation
by the decision module as discussed earlier. Such transmission of data is performed
to either fulfill user request or automatically broadcast to a group of users following
the hierarchal model presented in Sect. 6.1. In both situations, ICN-based networks
are preferred to send it to the user considering user’s interest [22]. Therefore, a good
way to use a named data network (NDN) to efficiently fulfill the user requirements
either by sub/pub or pull-based communications as which is used in this research.
Every decision module performs as an NDN node which consists of three entities,
that is, pending interest table (PIT), content store (CS), and a forward information
base (FIB). To avoid interest looping problem, PIT keeps the pending interests and
their unique nonce values. In research presented in [23], it is performed using CS
and FIB by storing incoming content and routing of content to another decision
module. An interest packet sends it to the NDN whenever a user is interested in
a particular data. The interested data is processed, and content is delivered from a
decision module following the NDN.
6.4 Simulation Results, Implementation, and Analysis
As mentioned earlier that Spark and GraphX with Hadoop single node setup on
UBUNTU 14.04 LTS coreTMi5 machine with 3.2 GHz processor and 4 GB memory
has been used to implement the proposed system. Pcap packets are generated from
the datasets by using Wireshark libraries and retransmit them towards the developed
system. Hadoop-pcap-lib, Hadoop-pcap-side, and Hadoop Pcap Input libraries have
been considered for network packets processing and generating Hadoop Readable
format collection and aggregation unit so it can be processed easily by these systems
(Hadoop and GraphX). To make smart transportation decisions, GraphX is used.
The data has been taken from [9, 10, 24]. Varieties in the traffic intensities at various
timings on the same road and the intensity analysis at various times of the day
provide great support to the authorities to manage, plan, and monitor traffic on any
particular time.
The intensity of the traffic of one of the roads of Aarhus city is shown in Fig. 6.4.
It indicates that the morning hours between 7:00 and 9:00 and noon timing from
11:25 to 12:30, the traffic is heavy on the roads. The heavy traffic may be due to
the school start and end timing and office start timing. It is a good performance
by the proposed system which announces such a situation and issue alerts. It not
only announces the heavy traffic but also looks into the blockage at roads if any.
Various methods have been used to define the blockage which includes the number
of vehicles and the average speed. If the average speed is less than a specific value
(threshold), then it can be predicted that there is some sort of blockage at the road.
The same information is communicated to the concerned users where they will try
to find the time at which there is very less traffic.
As an example, the analysis is performed on Aarhus city traffic, and the analysis
of the speed on the intensity of traffic is shown in Fig. 6.5. When the intensity of
traffic is more, that is, more vehicles on the road between two points, the average
speed of the vehicles is greater. The fall in some vehicles on the road results in a
rise in the average speed. It can be easily noticed that in a high number of cars (in
between 25 and 30), the average speed is very low at various times of the day, shown
102 S. Din et al.
14
12
10
No. of vehicals
8
6
4
2
0
07:50:00
08:25:00
08:55:00
09:25:00
09:55:00
10:25:00
10:55:00
11:25:00
11:55:00
12:25:00
12:55:00
13:25:00
13:55:00
14:30:00
15:05:00
15:35:00
16:15:00
17:35:00
20:55:00
16:55:00
23:25:00
05:35:00
06:15:00
06:50:00
Time
Fig. 6.4 Number of vehicles in a given time
80
Vehicular Count : 0-10 Vehicular Count : 11-20
70 Vehicular Count : 21-25 Vehicular Count : 25-30
60
Average Speed (km/h)
50
40
30
20
10
0
t1 t2 t3 t4 t5 t6 t7 t8 t9 t10 t11 t12 t13 t14 t15 t16 t17 t18 t19 t20 t21
Time
Fig. 6.5 The average speed of a vehicle
as a red color graph. In case of the low intensity in a number of cars (from 0 to 10)
shown as a blue color, the average speed of the vehicles is quite higher.
The data shows some abnormalities with the less number of cars and other
vehicles, and these abnormalities happen because of other reasons such as road
is under construction or traffic is diverted to some road because of the incident.
Usually, the distance is conserved to measure the time to reach the destination with
an observation that the number of cars and speed (average) also affects the total time
required to reach the target destination.
Average Speed Vehicle Count

20 25
18
Average Speed (km/h)
16 20
14
12 15
10
8 10
6
4 5
2
0 0
2014-10-01T05:40:00
2014-10-01T05:55:00
2014-10-01T06:10:00
2014-10-06T05:55:00
2014-10-08T05:35:00
2014-10-09T05:55:00
2014-10-22T06:00:00
2014-10-23T05:45:00
2014-10-23T06:00:00
2014-10-24T05:30:00
2014-10-27T07:10:00
2014-10-28T06:35:00
2014-10-28T06:55:00
2014-10-28T07:15:00
2014-10-29T06:35:00
2014-10-30T06:55:00
2014-11-03T06:30:00
2014-11-03T06:50:00
2014-11-04T06:45:00
2014-11-04T07:05:00
2014-11-06T06:45:00
2014-11-06T07:00:00
2014-11-10T06:35:00
2014-11-10T06:55:00
2014-11-11T07:05:00
2014-11-12T06:50:00
2014-11-13T06:20:00
2014-11-13T07:05:00
2014-10-02T06:00:00
2014-10-27T06:55:00
2014-11-05T06:50:00
2014-11-13T06:45:00
Date and Time
Fig. 6.6 Average speed during various dates and times
Figure 6.6 shows the road blockage in the city. Based on the proposed scheme,
the average speed of the vehicles is too low even when there are a minimum number
of vehicles on the road. It can be seen from various graphs that the road blockage
is shown in the morning hours on different days. One of the main reasons for this
is the construction work on the roads in the morning hours. In such cases, one can
take real-time traffic information to calculate the shortest and quickest path between
source and destination rather than only the distance information.
The humidity at home, shown in percentage in Fig. 6.7, plays a vital role in
user behavior while doing some physical exercise or work. Furthermore, increase
in the humidity demands more resources such as the usage of electricity, etc. The
proposed system exploits this phenomenon through a learning mechanism where the
sensor devices transferred data to the proposed scheme for experiencing the level of
humidity. The proposed scheme in December (2016) takes into considerations some
readings from the sensors and made threshold value. Using the past knowledge, the
proposed system starts predicting the humidity level for January (2016) and others.
The prediction of humidity levels provides great support to users to decide once
they know the level of the humidity as shown in Fig. 6.7. Figure 6.8 shows a
similar data but outside temperature. The processing of large graphs to achieve smart
transportation is the main contribution of this research work; the system is evaluated
on efficiency regarding throughput (in megabytes/sec Mbps) and the response time
(in milliseconds).
104 S. Din et al.
High Avg Low

120
100
Humidity (%)
80
60
40
20
0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Date (January 2016)
Fig. 6.7 Humidity inside home
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
20
15
Temperature (oC)
10
-5
-10
-15
Date (January 2016)
High Avg Low
Fig. 6.8 Outdoor temperature
6.5 Conclusion
In this research, a novel technique is presented to analyze and process big data
for useful application in a smart city environment. The latest technologies such as
Hadoop ecosystem alongside Spark and GraphX are deployed while developing the
abovementioned system. The novel technique is based on a three-level architecture
for efficient data gathering in smart city environment using sensor-based devices. To
normalize data for good use, a preprocessing stage is also used where the collected
data is passed to the upper levels for processing using SDN and NDN. APs are used
to get huge data and pass it to Hadoop ecosystem. A novel scheduling mechanism
is implanted in the Hadoop ecosystem to balance the load on the Hadoop ecosystem
efficiently. A comprehensive decision module is used, which performs and makes
different decisions using the predefined threshold values. The user can also request
in real time in the smart city environment to get support to make a decision.
A simulation test has been implemented for the proposed system on various
data obtained from authentic sources. The simulation results indicate that the
proposed system produced encouraging results. The use of Hadoop ecosystem was
also outstanding and significant by analyzing the data with better speed and high
throughput. Implanting cluster-based Hadoop system with sophisticated scheduling
mechanisms to further reduce the processing will be one of the major tasks for future
of this proposed research.
Acknowledgment This study was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea
(NRF) grant funded by the Korean government (NRF-2017R1C1B5017464).
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Chapter 7
Taking Cloud Computing to the Extreme
Edge: A Review of Mist Computing for
Smart Cities and Industry 4.0 in Africa
Eustace M. Dogo, Abdulazeez Femi Salami, Clinton O. Aigbavboa,

and Thembinkosi Nkonyana
7.1 Introduction
Cloud computing concept has been built with the assumptions of good Internet
connectivity, adequate bandwidth and low latency. But with the proliferation of
Internet of Things (IoT) of resource-constrained smart devices, stringent Internet
connectivity demand, high bandwidth, low latency, lower energy consumption,
context-awareness, mobility and enhanced security requirements placed on appli-
cations and services [2, 39] in Smart Cities and Industry 4.0 concepts, as well
as the huge amount of traffic and data expected to be generated, the traditional
cloud-centric architectural arrangement no longer holds due to these assumptions.
Cloud computing is therefore gradually evolving into new complementary concepts
as edge and fog computing and also dew and mist computing to address the
concerns mentioned above by extending the capabilities of cloud computing to the
extreme edge of the network closer to the data generation source. Mist computing
extends the concept of fog computing to the extreme edge of the network at the
level of microcontroller and embedded nodes and is based on IoT concept; on the
E. M. Dogo () · T. Nkonyana

Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering Science, Institute for Intelligent Systems,
University of Johannesburg, South Africa,
e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]
A. F. Salami
Computer Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering & Technology, University of Ilorin,
Nigeria
C. O. Aigbavboa
Department of Construction Management and Quantity Survey, Faculty of Engineering and the
Built Environment, University of Johannesburg, South Africa

108 E. M. Dogo et al.
other hand, dew computing is based on the Internet and client–server concepts,
whereby on-premises computer provides functionality that is independent of cloud
services, but also collaborative with cloud services [59]. The overall objective of
dew computing is to enable access to cloud computing services in the absence of
Internet connectivity.
In this chapter, an overview of mist computing model/architecture is provided
together with the scope and evolving nature of the topic, its characteristics and
comparison to cloud and fog computing, application scenarios, possible challenges
and future direction. There exist several surveys on fog, dew and mist computing,
but this chapter, therefore, does not intend to revisit these concepts in their entirety.
However, this chapter aims to discuss mist computing in Smart Cities and Industry
4.0 in the context of Africa. The study is an extension of the work done in
[19], which focused on how Nigeria and other developing ICT economies in
Africa can benefit from cloud computing and its evolving and complementary
implementations, challenges, drivers supporting its growth and future vision in the
region.
Section 7.2 of this chapter provides overview on the overlapping and com-
plementary key background concepts, namely, IoT, big data, cloud computing,
edge computing and its implementation. The architecture of mist computing,
its characteristics and its similarity and dissimilarity with cloud computing, fog
computing and edge computing is covered in Section 7.3. In Section 7.4, the
potential, application and use case scenarios of mist computing with respect to two
emerging concepts, namely, Smart Cities and Industry 4.0 with focus on Africa, are
discussed. In Sect. 7.5, an outline of the possible challenges in the implementation
of mist computing, based on observation and trends, is discussed together with
the drivers supporting the growth and technical recommendations in the context of
Africa. Section 7.5 also discusses the future perspective of Smart Cities and Industry
4.0, while Sect. 7.6 concludes this chapter.
Several wide-range and inclusive surveys [2, 8, 17] and studies have been
undertaken in recent times on cloud computing [13, 45, 56], edge computing [2],
fog computing [10, 25] and its implementation in Smart Cities [38] and Industry 4.0
[33], mobile edge computing [1, 29, 30, 53], cloudlet [37, 48, 49], dew computing
[44, 52, 59, 60] and mist computing [39, 40].
The web search interest over a period of 12 months as measured by Google search
trends on fog, edge, mist and dew computing is shown in Fig. 7.1. The Google
trend search shows a very low interest and possibly low awareness overall on these
evolving cloud computing concepts, most especially in Africa. This motivates the
essence and purpose of the research work presented in this chapter.
7 Taking Cloud Computing to the Extreme Edge: A Review of Mist. . . 109
Fig. 7.1 Google search trend over the past 12 months
7.2 Overview of Key Background Concepts
In this section, an overview of key enabling concepts and technologies that are
highly intertwined and overlapping with mist and dew computing is given as it
relates to Smart Cities and Industry 4.0.
7.2.1 Internet of Things (IoT)
IoT is a communication technology concept that envisions a scenario where objects

or things are interconnected with one another, based on standard communication
protocols, each with its uniquely identifiable addressing system, forming an integral
part of the Internet [6]. IETF categorizes IoT into three: people, machines and
information. Figure 7.2 depicts the three-tier IoT functional stack architecture,
comprising of the Things embedded with sensing capabilities, the networking layer
and the specific application layer. IoT is vast and overlaps with other research fields
as depicted in Fig. 7.3.
Fig. 7.2 Three-tier

Architecture of IoT [31]
Fig. 7.3 IoT overlap with

other research areas [31]
Ubiquitous/
Pervasive
Computing
Intranet or
Internet
Extranet of
Protocol
Things
Internet of
Internet of
Things Com-
munication
people
Technology
Embedded
Application
Device
Wireless communication technology plays an important role in IoT, and [11]

identifies the key and important aspects of IoT technology such as Radio Frequency
Identification (RFID), Wireless sensor networks (WSN), Network Addressing and
IoT middleware software. The authors also proposed a new paradigm called
CloudIoT, which is the integration of cloud computing and IoT as these two
complementary technologies are expected to shape the direction of the current and
future Internet. McKinsey & Company predicts a potential economic value of up to
$11 trillion by the year 2025 if the policy makers and businesses can link the cyber-
physical systems together. On the other hand, IDC predicts that by 2019, 45% of
IoT-created data will be stored, processed, analysed and acted upon close to/at the
edge of the network.
The annual IoT Forum Africa (IoTFA), a platform that enables industry and
expert practitioners to share their vision on IoT trends, challenges and solutions
in virtually all aspects of life and in different industries, reinforces how IoT has the
potential of transforming the African continent.
7.2.2 Big Data
The rate of deployment and expansion of devices and sensors connected to the IoT
is a major source of data generated and transmitted in real time. Cisco projects
that by 2020, the number of connected devices will exceed 50 billion [21], while
some experts have even projected higher numbers due to the rapid advancement
in the Internet and Internet device technology. It must be mentioned that with
respect to these generated data, cloud computing facilitates storage, processing
and analysis. Overtime data collection and analytics have evolved into three (3)
ways – Analytic 1.0, collection of historical data; Analytic 2.0, social media and
unstructured information; and Analytic 3.0, real-time IoT data from a vast number
of sensors (heterogeneity) – making it challenging to push data to a single cloud
data warehouse, hence the need to bring data analytics closer to the edge of network
into routers and gateways, as well as on-board embedded systems with sensors (mist
computing).
The characteristics of big data are captured in the 5 V’s model, namely,
volume, variety, velocity, veracity and value [35]; hence, a data that meets these
characteristics is termed big data. Big data in Africa has numerous applications,
such as in climate change, poverty and disease surveillance, agriculture, banking
and finance, supply chain, media, space research and biological research [34, 41,
54].
7.2.3 Cloud Computing
According to the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

and the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA), “Cloud
computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network
access to shared pool of configurable computing resource (e.g., networks, servers,
storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with
minimal management effort or service provider interaction, through visualization
and multi-tenancy arrangement”. Readers are referred to [19] for details on cloud
computing concepts and analysis on how it relates to Nigeria and by extension
Africa.
7.2.4 Edge Computing and Its Implementations
Edge computing (EC) has evolved from cloud computing due to the tremendous
growth in IoT devices, which according to Cisco is estimated to reach 50 billion
devices in no distant future. This comes with several challenges to the traditional
cloud computing arrangement on several fronts such as the need for low latency,
high bandwidth, enhanced security due to several organizations’ sentiments on their
data residing in unknown third party’s data centre and the growing demand and
advocacy for a greener technology. Hence, the need to extend cloud computing
capabilities closer to the data source on the edge of the enterprise network
using the edge gateway’s core routers and switches is necessary. Overtime, edge
computing has also evolved into other complementary implementations to address
challenges and flaws associated with cloud and edge computing. A brief overview
of the technological implementations of edge computing is discussed over the next
subsections. For a more detailed survey, readers are referred to [8].
7.2.4.1 Fog Computing
Fog computing (FC) was originally proposed by Cisco [10], which extends cloud
computing to the edge of the network at the level of routers and gateways. Its
emergence is due to developing applications that are sensitive to latency, which
cannot be met by the current cloud-centric architectural arrangement. There is
currently no globally accepted definition of FC; however, for the purpose of the
research work presented in this chapter, the definition formally stated by [10]
is adopted, which states that: “Fog computing is a highly virtualized platform
that provides compute, storage and networking services between end devices and
traditional Cloud Computing data centres, typically, but not exclusively located
at the edge of the network” with the fog nodes as its building blocks which are
“distributed fog computing entities enabling the deployment of fog services and
formed by at least one or more physical devices with processing and sensing
capabilities (e.g., computer, mobile phone, smart edge device, car, temperature
sensors, etc.). All physical devices of a fog node are connected by different network
technologies (wired and wireless) and aggregated and abstracted to be viewed as
one single logical entity, that is the fog node, able to seamlessly execute distributed
services, as it were on a single device” [20].
Figure 7.4 depicts the fog to cloud architecture, with one cloud layer and two
fog layers. Fog layer 1 is directly connected to the edge devices, while fog layer
2 is in between fog layer 1 and the cloud, acting as an intermediate processing
layer. According to the OpenFog Consortium, advantages of fog computing include
enhanced security due to the distributed architecture, cognition/decision-making on
fog node, improved agility, lower latency and overall efficiency.
CLOUD
Internet
FOG NODE
Fog layer 2
FOG NODE
FOG NODE
Edge devices
Edge devices Fog layer 2
Fig. 7.4 Fog-cloud architecture [20]
7.2.4.2 Mobile Edge Computing
Mobile edge computing (MEC) is a telecommunication concept driven by smart

mobile devices, IoT and 5G communications paradigms, which offers cloud com-
puting capabilities and features in terms of storage and mobile computing at the
edge of the radio access network (RAN) leveraging on the mobile base stations away
from the traditional mobile cloud computing (MCC) arrangement, thereby reducing
latency and enabling efficient use of the core mobile network and better mobile user
experience [1, 30]. While IoT technology over the years is reaching its maturity,
unlike 5G communication technology whose maturity is still being anticipated,
there are already very high expectations due to the many potential advantages that
next-generation 5G brings to wireless communication technology. Several expert
opinions agree on the positive gains that Smart Cities-based [4, 32] and Industry
4.0-based [23, 47, 55] solutions can acquire by leveraging on future 5G network
such as dealing with the exponential growth of data, user density, data capacity, low
power consumption and data rates for very large connected IoT devices and catering
for mission and safety-critical applications [18]. To this end, recently mobile edge
computing (MEC) was renamed multiaccess edge computing to reflect the interests
of both cellular and non-cellular operators across the industries [2, 53]. Ten (10) key
technological components were identified and discussed in detail by [3] that will
satisfy the requirement and building blocks of 5G wireless network communication
technology, namely, a wireless software-defined network (WSdN), network func-
tion virtualization (NFV), millimetre wave transmission (mWT), massive MIMO,
network ultra-densification (NUd), big data and mobile cloud computing (MCC),
scalable Internet of Things, device-to-device connectivity with high mobility, green
communications and new radio access network techniques (RAN).
7.2.4.3 Cloudlets
Cloudlet is the middle layer in a three-tier hierarchical architectural model made

up of end-user mobile devices–cloudlet–cloud, similar to the arrangement in fog
computing for IoT devices. This model’s arrangement provides for an edge–cloud
platform that extends cloud services and features closer to the end-user mobile
devices [48, 49)]. Cloudlet can be viewed as the edge of the Internet providing
computing, storage and networking capabilities to neighbouring mobile devices
acting as a thin client to offload resource-intensive task and data caching, thereby
improving execution speed and energy savings [37, 53]. Cloudlets are developed
with virtualization features to meet the current demands of emerging mobile
applications, such as high computational resource demand of mobile applications
and service with low latency requirements.
7.2.4.4 Microdata Centre
Microdata centre (MDC) is a modular pre-fabricated standalone data centre unit

enclosed with all the features of a traditional data centre such as servers, virtual
machines (VM), cooling system, network connectivity, uninterruptible power sup-
ply (UPS), security and access control systems as well as flood and fire protection
and a high degree of mobility and ease of deployment. Bandwidth constraints,
growth in time-sensitive applications and security are some of the driving factors
behind the adoption of MDCs by organizations as part of an edge cloud solution, in
order to support IoT workloads at the edge of the enterprise network in a distributed
manner. This is a viable solution not only for established organizations but also
for SMEs and developing regions where real-time data analysis is required. MDC
finds application across different industries such as assembly plants, manufacturing
industries, exploration and mining, smart cities application solutions and construc-
tion industry [8].
7.2.5 Fluid Computing
Fluid computing is an envisioned next-generation cloud architectural paradigm that

eliminates the segregation created by cloud, fog and mist computing technologies,
unifying them under a single abstraction through provisioning of an end-to-end
cooperative platform which can be used for seamless computing, storage and
networking to allow application data flow between functionalities regardless of
whether the resource has been provided by cloud, fog or mist infrastructure. This
is done by leveraging on virtualization and soft computing [12, 16].
7.2.6 Blockchain Technology
Security, privacy and regulatory frameworks [5] are key concerns relating to new
and emerging technologies in cloud computing, Smart Cities and Industry 4.0,
due to the sensitive information generated and transmitted by resource-constrained
smart terminal devices in the IoT ecosystem which are prone to security attacks.
Blockchain technology, a peer-to-peer (P2P) distributed ledger technology for
transparent transaction devoid of a trusted intermediary, has evolved beyond its
original application to support bitcoin cryptocurrency and is seen as a viable option
to address these concerns by integrating it with smart devices in smart cities in order
to provide a secure communication platform [9] and with cyber-physical systems
(CPS) in Industry 4.0 to provide transparent transactions among smart devices [7].
7.3 Extreme Edge Computing
7.3.1 Mist Computing
Mist computing has evolved from fog and cloud computing into a collaborative
cloud technology based on the idea that communication should be made at the
level of sensors and actuators without burden on the communication network and
the Internet, by leveraging on the computational networking resources from the
devices at the very edge of the IoT networks. This leads to increased autonomy of
the system and reduced latency and bandwidth usage with a corresponding power
consumption reduction as communication accounts for five times consumption
compared to computation. “Mist Computing represents a paradigm in which edge
network devices, that have predictable accessibility, provide their computational
and communicative resources as services to their vicinity via Device-to-Device
communication protocols. Requesters in Mist can distribute software processes to
Mist service providers for execution” [28]. Scalability, reconfigurability, location
self-awareness, situation awareness and attention and machine-to-machine com-
munication (M2M) are core features of mist computing [39]. Cisco is leading
the vision to move data analytics closer to where the data is generated for better
decision support of mission critical services instead of backhauling it to the cloud
or even the fog. IoT smart devices should not just be about data collection; most
importantly, they should bring intelligence to the extreme edge of the network
to derive value from the data for quicker decision support. Fog computing has
been able to address a lot of challenges associated with IoT, including bandwidth
and latency requirements. In fog computing, the gateway is key to ensuring the
coordination and functioning of IoT applications; however, this arrangement has
some drawbacks, such as the gateway being the single point of failure since the
entire network is dependent on it [40]. For this reason, mist computing is gaining
popularity fast and is seen to address some of the concerns on cloud and fog
computing architectures with Thinnect, an IoT edge network service provider, at
the forefront of the development and implementation of mist computing in real-life
scenarios.
7.3.1.1 Architecture of Mist Computing
Mist is made up of a large number of heterogeneous devices at the extreme edge

of the IoT network which is capable of providing some form of services to aid
the improvement of IoT applications in terms of the computational processes [28].
Figure 7.5 depicts the conceptual framework of mist in the IoT environment, with
the sensors and actuators as the generators and processors of data at the extreme
edge of the IoT network layout.
Fig. 7.5 Mist in IoT framework. (Source: Cisco)

7.3.1.2 Characteristics of Mist Computing
1. Hardware: Low latency, limited communication bandwidth, insufficient security,

low mobility, low power
2. Situation awareness: Awareness on the physical environment and the local
situation in collaboration with cloud and fog computing (see also Sect. 7.3.3)
7.3.2 Dew Computing
Since the emergence of the concept of dew computing originally proposed in [58],
other technical definitions have also emerged from various researchers [22, 52].
In the context of the research work presented in this chapter, the definition in
Wang (2016) [59] is adopted, which states that: “Dew computing is an on-premises
computer software-hardware organization paradigm in the cloud computing envi-
ronment where the on-premises computer provides functionality that is independent
of cloud services and is also collaborative with cloud services”. The goal of
dew computing is to fully realize the potentials of on-premises computers and
cloud services. The vision behind dew computing is based on the concept of the
Internet, whereby it envisioned users situated in any part of an enterprise network
to access the cloud without the continuous access to the Internet using a client–
server model, in a complementary manner to cloud computing [46]. Figure 7.6
depicts a conceptualized model of dew–cloud architecture comprising of dew server,
dew DBMS, dew client program, dew client service application and high-speed
connection to the cloud server. For more details on the concepts of dew computing,
readers are referred to [44, 59, 60].
7.3.3 Comparison of Mist with Cloud, Edge and Fog

Computing
A summary of the comparison between cloud, fog and mist computing is shown in
Table 7.1, which is based on earlier studies by [25].
7.4 Potentials, Applications and Use Case Scenarios of Mist

Computing
In this section, the potentials, applications and use case scenarios of mist computing
will be broadly discussed with respect to two emerging conceptual domains, namely,
Smart Cities and Industry 4.0.
Fig. 7.6 Conceptual cloud–dew architecture [44]

Table 7.1 Comparison of mist with cloud, edge and fog computing
Cloud Edge
computing computing Fog computing Mist computing
Support for IoT Yes Yes Yes Yes
Infrastructure Centralized and Centralized Decentralized Centralized/distributed
deployment accessed via the LAN or IoT gate- with the
model internet way/distributed microcontroller
network
Efficiency High Higher Higher Higher
Latency High 100 ms Low Low 10–100 ms Ultra-low 10–100 ms
and above
Bandwidth High Low Low Low 1–300 kbps
1Mbps–10Gbps 100 kbps–1Mbps
Computational High Moderate Moderate Low
power
Mobility support No Yes Yes Yes
of IoT services
Data status Data at rest Data in Data in transit/at Data in transit
transit/at rest rest
Security and Higher concern High Medium concern Low concern since
privacy concerns due to sending data reside with the
raw data over hardware
the internet
QoS Yes Yes Yes Yes (limited)
Geographical Limited spread Limited spread Wide spread in Very wide spread in
availability in hundreds in hundreds to thousand to million–trillion
thousands million
Service type Global Limited Limited Very limited
Hardware Large Limited Limited Very limited
Working Indoor data Indoor Outdoor/indoor Outdoor/indoor
environment centre
Power Very high High Low Very low
consumption
Online/offline Only online Dual Dual online/offline
capabilities online/offline
Addressing IPv4/IPv6 IPv4/IPv6 IPv4/IPv6 IPv6 (6LowPAN)
Cost of Medium Medium High Low
implementation
7.4.1 Smart Cities
African cities are vital centres of trade, commerce, innovation and many other
important activities. Recent statistics estimate that by 2030, over 60% of the
African population would be dwelling in cities. In addition to this fact, these cities
approximately contribute 70% of greenhouse gas emissions and energy utilization
while occupying and accounting for only 5% of the continental land mass [14, 26].
Apart from these environmental trends, African cities are presently experiencing
an increasingly huge demand for food, water, shelter and building materials, risk
and disaster control strategies, waste management schemes and pollution control
strategies [26].
African cities are therefore under constant and immense pressure to provide
better standard of living, offer quality amenities and services, address social
and environmental issues, foster economic growth and trade competitiveness,
promote regional urbanization and industrial mechanization, attract investments
and reduce costs [26]. These pressures are necessitating African cities to look
into smart solutions in order to tackle the plethora of problems and challenges
on the ground. Such solutions will enable African cities to transform into smart
sustainable cities where ICT innovations and high-tech social amenities are used to
provide improved standard of living, quality services delivery, seamless urbanized
operations, economic self-reliance and growth trends that will match up with the
environmental demands, social requirements and economic needs of the present and
future generations.
Industrial experts and field specialists have shown that mist computing is more
suitable for realizing smart city solutions where streets intelligently adapt to
dynamic events, conditions, situations and changes in the city [15, 16, 39]. An
interesting innovation which can possibly serve as a model for African cities to anal-
yse, adapt and adopt is the smart street light control system developed by Cityntel
[57]. This system is based on next-generation flat wireless mesh network (for direct
application and device layer communications) and mist computing stack where
controllers are equipped with data processing and embedded intelligence features.
These smart controllers carry out network-based and/or device-specific decision-
making operations and rely on wireless communication for data transmission and
reception with sensors and detectors, such as movement and road surface detectors
and noise, light reflection, air pollution, humidity and temperature sensors [57].
Unlike existing conventional systems, this solution replaces centralized perma-
nent remote server control with distributed intelligent adaptive and autonomous
situation- and context-aware devices. In this system, the LED street lights dynam-
ically adjust brightness based on updates and notifications regarding the status of
weather condition, human presence and movement and nature of traffic flow or
intensity. In a situation where there is little traffic, street lights will switch to energy-
saving mode by dimming their lights. Centralized computing is also utilized for
processing aggregated data in order to make results of statistical analysis readily
available for low-level device programming and learning. Energy conservation,
minimized cost, easy upgrade and compatibility, fast and cost-effective deployment
and high precision and reliability are ensured due to the adoption of adaptive,
local communication and distributed computing strategies among low-cost wireless
sensors for desirable system performance [57].
7.4.1.1 Smart Cities and Blockchain Technology
Despite all the numerous potential benefits associated with the concept of smart
cities, information security and privacy remain a concern to stakeholders due to the
vast amount of vital statistics and transit information generated by interconnected
smart devices in the IoT ecosystem. There is, therefore, a need for information to:
(i) be confidential, non-disclosure of sensitive information; (ii) possess integrity,
information is accurate and reliable; and (iii) not manipulated or corrupted and
available whenever/wherever needed by authorized persons. A lot of research
has been carried out to address cloud security, but challenges remain due to the
heterogeneous nature and resource constraints of smart devices, compatibility and
other pertinent factors. A comprehensive review of cloud security is discussed in
[27]. Recently, Blockchain which is a P2P distributed ledger technology devoid
of a trustworthy intermediary (originally developed to support cryptocurrency) has
received a lot of attention as a solution to address security concerns in numerous
domains including smart cities [9]. Figure 7.7 shows a proposed smart city security
framework across the physical, communication, database and application layers of
IoT device to enable a common framework for secured data communication by
different smart devices in a distributed community of devices.
7.4.2 Industry 4.0
Industry 4.0 can be conceptually viewed as embracing and infusing the core
ideas of mist computing in the factory with the goal of gaining operational and
performance efficiencies through rapid and precise decision-making for automated
devices in the factory environment [24, 43]. In the context of this research, Industry
4.0 can be technically viewed as the collaborative use of mist computing, smart
environmental sensors, robots, big data and mobile devices via cognitive and
independent automation in order to achieve flexible mass production, easy product
customization, scalability, predictability and greater efficiency during the entire
manufacturing process [42].
This fourth industrial revolution goes beyond simply automating production,
and it is based on cyber-physical systems achieved through complete and seamless
digitalization of the manufacturing industry [24, 42]. Industrial locations and
manufacturing operations are unique in Africa since the continental landscapes
are vast with scattered and sporadic business hubs. In addition to this, many local
corporations and manufacturing industries in Africa have matured to the level of
making effective and productive use of data generating technologies and reactive
data analysis strategies. It must also be added that a large number of manufacturing
organizations in Africa are already aware of the ongoing global trends in Industry
4.0 together with the significant potentials and immense benefits of this explosive
technology.
Fig. 7.7 Conceptualized smart cities security framework [9]
However, in comparison with developed ICT economies of the world, the African
continent is still yet to attain full-blown maturity with respect to adopting, imple-
menting and deriving maximum benefits from harnessing the potentials of Industry
4.0. Moreover, the widespread adoption of smart technologies and ICT innovations
that can rapidly catalyse Industry 4.0 is still at a budding stage in most indigenous
manufacturing industries in Africa. This impediment is a result of the general
reluctance to venture into and invest in new knowledge and novel technologies
by the government and industry of most countries in Africa. This hindrance is
also due to the entrenched business culture among African manufacturers where
cost-minimization measures are highly prioritized and expenditures on innovative
technologies are curtailed to generate maximum profit in the prevailing harsh and
competitive economic environment.
An exception to this is the case of African-based large international organizations
with cross-continental operations where the level of adoption of smart solutions and
innovative technologies is encouraging. From the African perspective, the proper
adoption and judicious usage of Industry 4.0 offers limitless opportunities to tackle
some socio-economic problems and prevalent industrial challenges associated with
supply chain logistics through the development of smart machines, smart factories,
smart plants, smart products, smart technologies and smart services. This will foster
the development of unique, indigenous, high-tech gadgets, products, devices and
services that can successfully leapfrog and dynamically compete with competitors
in the global market. A suitable and relevant use case model for this research
context is Siemens’ MindSphere, which has the potential of serving as an underlying
platform for mist computing services pertinent to resource optimization, energy data
management and preventive/predictive maintenance [50, 51].
7.4.2.1 Industry 4.0 and Blockchain Technology
Blockchain technology which was originally developed for Bitcoin and cryp-
tocurrency as aforementioned is also gradually finding interesting and fruitful
applications in Industry 4.0. Supply chain management, smart contract, digital
currencies and tighter cybersecurity are applications of Blockchain technology in
Industry 4.0. The need for confidentiality, integrity and availability of sensor data
is critical to industrial applications and manufacturing systems. Therefore, it is
envisioned that Blockchain technology will catalyse remote machine diagnostics
and machine-to-supplier transactions which will lead to improved spare parts
replacement and overall maintenance practices.
7.4.2.2 Predictive Maintenance
Maintenance is a critical issue in manufacturing, and it goes without saying that

maintenance is a prerequisite for effective and sustainable service delivery. Predic-
tive maintenance (PdM) is one of the landmark innovations ensuing from Industry
4.0 which paves the way for predicting future asset failures, forecasting residual
machine service lifetime, optimizing timing and scheduling of maintenance, unam-
biguously ascertaining machine operational statuses, proffering efficient preventive
measures and enhancing equipment performance, quality and availability [36]. This
is made possible due to the fact that historical and real-time data collected by the
Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) sensors is an integral part of the process of
predicting when a failure is likely to occur. In this scenario, mist computing where
sensors analyse data in real time close to the source is more viable than sending all
the data to a cloud or fog gateway, as this saves time and quicker decision support
in a more secure environment.
Benefits of PdM
Cost Reduction PdM with IIoT could benefit industry by improving efficiency,
reducing inventory carrying costs, saving material costs, improving the return on
asset (ROA), cutting down the cost of engaging service providers, reducing the cost
of repairs and spare parts purchase and reducing unwanted costs associated with
unplanned downtime and frequent maintenance. In addition to this, PdM with IIoT
right on site reduces burden on network and overall cloud cost.
Direct and Impactful Value Creation PdM enables data collection without
additional cost as the IIoT sensors are all located where the source of the problem
is likely to occur. This makes it possible for prompt and rapid remote intervention
in urgent repair and maintenance operations. Resultantly, manufacturing industries
employing PdM achieve higher customer satisfaction and add more value and
superior quality to the products and services offered to their customers due to
their proactive decision-making processes, improved production strategies and pre-
emptive business models.
Secure, Safer and Sustainable Operation By adopting PdM, enhanced data
security is ensured as data is collected and analysed right in the factory instead
of sending to the Internet or external data centre or gateways which are prone
to cyberattacks. This enhancement enables manufacturers to deal with unexpected
events and better reduce health, safety, environmental and quality risks in the entire
manufacturing process. In addition to this, there is the advantage of easily and
safely planning service intervals, achieving real-time analytics and attaining ultra-
low response time during machine operation.
Uptime Improvement and Availability PdM ensures increased uptime and avail-
ability of the machine and equipment due to the reliance on automated intervention
of autonomous and cognitive systems that ensure better machine availability and
service life, prolong lifetime of aging assets, prevent lasting damage to relatively
new equipment and foster quality control and precision manufacturing.
Accurate Predictions and Better Decisions By utilizing PdM, a plethora of new
data sources are constantly made available that reliably and accurately reflect the
real operational status of equipment for better decision-making. In addition to this,
PdM ensures that valuable time is expended on data-driven problem solving and
not wasted on brute-force data collection and validation. Another clear advantage of
PdM in terms of economy and efficiency is that IIoT sensors, data collection, data
analytics and decision support for PdM are all with a local area network (LAN).
7.5 Implementation Challenges in Africa
Skills Gap and Digital Divide The digital divide between developing ICT
economies in Africa and developed ICT economies is not an overstatement, but
this divide is still present and significantly wide in some regions of Africa. This
digital divide, unfortunately, hinders or delays the rate of technical training, capacity
building and skills acquisition necessary for the successful implementation of mist
computing. In addition to this, the present engineering and ICT curriculum in most
African institutions need reforms that will sufficiently enrich the programmes with
practical skills that will adequately prepare and equip Africans for mist computing
solutions and other emerging innovative technologies. Presently, there is very little
research work that decisively investigates and quantifies the real impact of this
existing digital divide and skills deficit. Therefore, it is necessary in Africa to
embrace a holistic approach that considers the dual goal of investing in smart
people and smart technologies.
Technology Transfer, Assimilation and Domestication It would be very chal-
lenging to realize the latent benefits of mist computing when solutions are simply
imported from developed ICT economies into Africa as turnkey products and
services. These smart technology solutions need to be meticulously studied, prop-
erly understood and, most importantly, technically adapted to be indigenously
relevant, suitable and effective to tackle the specific development needs of Africa.
This is necessary because economic situation, geographical context and cultural
inclination play an indispensable role in the technology transfer process. Therefore,
governments and corporate organizations in Africa need to adopt mist computing
solutions in accordance with their prevailing regional socio-economic needs. For
instance, adopting a mist computing solution that demands massive data aggregation
from a large wireless sensor network for distributed intelligent transport and traffic
management system will be prohibitively expensive and unsuitable based on the
existing economic realities and social demands in most African countries. In such
a scenario, a localized and simplified version of this smart technology solution
that ingeniously harnesses the pervasiveness of mobile telephone data and other
available cost-effective and easily accessible alternatives will be more suitable to
the context of Africa.
Inclusiveness and Governance Smart technology projects involving mist comput-
ing call for smart governance models in order for such technological enterprise
to thrive in Africa without suffering premature and sudden downfall. The need
to develop and implement this pragmatic governance model in Africa is long
overdue as there is an evident disconnect, disharmony and lack of synergy between
polytechnics, universities, indigenous industries, multinational corporations, civil
societies and local, state and federal governments. Such a smart governance model
will bring together and carry along all parties during the course of executing
the project in order to gain varying perspectives and get robust recommendations
and vital suggestions from experts in the economic, legal, educational, political,
technical, financial, ethical, social and developmental fields. The current governance
model for technology projects in most African countries is still not fully inclusive
due to information isolation which acts as a great obstacle to resource integration
in the process of executing technological projects at both managerial and technical
levels. Therefore, there is a need to reform the existing modus operandi and evolve
smart governance models that will enable data and services from mist computing
solutions to be useful for citizens, accessible for decision-making, readily available
and highly effective in tackling the various developmental needs of Africa.
Failure, Faults and Risk Other challenges hindering the full adoption and imple-
mentation of smart technology projects involving mist computing in Africa are
the failing infrastructures, resource constraints, high maintenance and running

costs, faulty amenities, dysfunctional basic services, deleterious environmental
conditions, counterfeit spare parts and unreliable products. These are part of the
factors discouraging well-established global data players in mist computing from
fully investing in most African countries. In addition to this, the extra cost of
importing foreign quality products and services and the worrisomely slow rate
of infrastructural development are major inhibitors for the full and permanent
establishment of smart technology centres involving mist computing in most African
countries.
Funding Opportunities and Business Blueprint Smart technology projects
involving mist computing need financial resources and a high level of cooperation
and partnership between the public and private sectors in order to ensure smooth
running and completion of such projects. Unfortunately, respective governments of
African countries are yet to come out with a clear, focused and robust business
model and blueprint that will stipulate regulatory framework, infrastructural
requirements, taxation guidelines, ownership rights and stakeholder policies in
order to genuinely convince and encourage the private sector to invest and innovate
in mist computing solutions and other related smart technology projects. Embarking
on a smart technology project in Africa without this coherent and realistic business
plan will unnecessarily complicate and delay the entire execution process which
inadvertently opens the door for many risks and unforeseen setbacks. In addition to
this, citizens are, most of the time, not fully and properly sensitized on the actual
costs incurred and tangible socio-economic benefits ensuing from these smart
technology projects. This makes it very difficult for the respective governments and
corporate bodies in various African countries to enable the citizens to fully patronize
and comply with the rules and charges associated with using such innovative
technologies.
7.5.1 Drivers Supporting Growth in Africa
Trainable and Resourceful Young Population One of the biggest drivers encour-
aging the establishment of smart technology projects involving mist computing in
Africa is the large youthful population who are able, hardworking and willing to
learn and be trained on the technical and managerial aspects of these innovative
technologies. These vibrant youths are very much cognizant of the global technolog-
ical trends, and they desire to consume and enjoy the services of the same high-tech
quality products as other consumers in developed ICT economies. Moreover, these
African youths are relatively more entrepreneurial, dynamic, flexible, trendy, open-
minded and computer literate, making it very easy and less costly for them to
be trained on the proper understanding, usage, running, handling, operation and
management of smart technology systems involving mist computing.
Limited Compatibility and Upgrade Bottlenecks Adopting smart technology

projects involving mist computing will be relatively smoother, easier and quicker
as issues tied to resource provisioning and the prohibitively high cost of upgrading
and maintaining old technological infrastructures and outdated systems are more
or less non-existent in the African context. This means that in the case of most
African countries, there is the smart choice of starting with the latest and most
up-to-date mist computing solutions available which automatically bring these
African countries at par with well-established data players and competitors in the
global market. Therefore, this makes it easier for African countries to successfully
partake in the global market and reach a far wider audience and consumers with
considerably less overhead costs and bottlenecks.
Industrialization Wave and Urbanization Drive Respective governments of
various African countries are fully aware that industrialization and urbanization
are keys to surviving and surmounting the onslaught of socio-economic challenges.
Consequently, most African countries are now adopting a vigorous and aggressive
innovation and digitalization drive that cuts across for-profit and non-profit organi-
zations: educational, financial and government institutions and all other facets of
life. With governments and citizens eager to improve their standard and quality
of living, this powerhouse of innovation can significantly act as a catalyst for the
widespread reception, successful adoption and effective implementation of mist
computing solutions and other related emerging technologies.
Booming Connectivity The advent, upsurge and success of mobile telecommuni-
cation industries in Africa have undoubtedly made the impossible achievable and
paved the way for the connection of people even in the remote regions of the
continent. With the fastest mobile subscription penetration rate in the world, Africa
is at a vantage point and strategically positioned to better collaborate with global
data players and world technology leaders in developed ICT economies in order to
fast-track the development of indigenous smart technology projects involving mist
computing.
Industrial Focus and Research Interest It is worth mentioning and highly
encouraging to highlight the heightened focus and growing body of research work
on innovative technologies, smart solutions and mist computing from the industrial
and academic sectors in Africa. This shows that there is a genuine concern to harness
the immense potentials of mist computing in order to seriously tackle the plethora
of developmental challenges on the ground and achieve a sustainable transformation
of the computing landscape of Africa. In addition to this, these progressive efforts
will open up more diverse opportunities in African countries for their citizens,
local companies and government bodies to properly prepare and make adequate
plans for the tangible, derivable benefits attached to the design and development of
applications and systems based on mist computing. Therefore, a more favourable
and highly receptive atmosphere is created which will support the adoption and
sustainable development of mist computing in Africa.
7.5.2 Technical Recommendations
Reform Curriculums and Intensify STEM Education A large portion of innova-

tive technologies and mist computing solutions rest on a solid foundation in science,
technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education. Therefore, there is the
urgent need for pragmatic curriculum reforms in Africa at preuniversity, university,
postgraduate and vocational levels that will effectively infuse special skills in
these fields needed for smart solutions. In addition to this, it must be mentioned
that smart technology projects are multidisciplinary in nature, and they require
multidisciplinary teams who can think and make decisions with multidisciplinary
perspectives. Therefore, there is the need for relevant institutions in Africa to
promote and provide opportunities for multidisciplinary learning and research.
Promote Local Innovation Culture Promoting a culture of technology domesti-
cation entails engaging a broad range of stakeholders and concerned parties who
are educators, administrators, innovators, legislators, entrepreneurs, researchers and
citizen members. This synergy is indispensable in order to effectively implement
smart technology projects involving mist computing that will appropriately address
the socio-economic needs of citizens of respective African countries. In addition
to this, African countries need to create policy environments and devise judicious
means of linking existing innovation infrastructures with novel mist computing
solutions.
Provide Platforms for Inclusive Governance Respective governments of African
countries need to urgently take advantage of the many innovative technological
applications and social platforms in order to interactively and regularly engage
their citizens and all stakeholders on the trends, recent efforts, progress and proper
management of smart technologies and mist computing. This will go a long way
in creating accountability, transparency and most importantly, a participatory and
inclusive governance.
Establish Quality Control and Maintenance Centres In order to attain and
maintain a high standard of smart city solutions and allied manufactured technology
products in Africa, there is the pressing need to establish effective technology con-
trol and maintenance centres adequately equipped with the constitutional powers to
monitor, assess and enforce quality for innovative technologies. The establishment
of many of such centres in Africa will instil the culture of quality among various
local science, technology and innovation (STI) communities, favourably attract
foreign direct investments, improve the quality of mist computing services and, most
especially, reduce the cost of adoption, implementation and domestication of mist
computing in Africa.
Make Feasible Plans and Seek Concrete Funding Opportunities To achieve
sustainable development of smart city solutions, respective governments of African
countries should come out with feasible monetization policies, convincing cost
recovery mechanisms and practical execution plans that will minimize wastage of
resources and maximize efficiency gains. This approach will unambiguously and
seriously convince interested local, regional and international investors to provide
necessary financial support for smart technology projects involving mist computing
in Africa.
7.6 Conclusion
Smart Cities and Industry 4.0 are still in their budding stage in Africa. But with
the rapid pace of technological transformation with its envisioned disruption to
businesses and society, it is critical for Africa to join, with the possibility of
catching up technologically with the rest of the world. The current trend suggests
a massive shift away from a centralized cloud architecture towards a distributed
architecture with more computing and intelligent capabilities at the edge or extreme
edge of the network closer to users. Mist computing has the potential to solve
many of the unique socio-economic challenges currently facing Africa in different
spheres of life in a collaborative way with the existing cloud and fog computing
frameworks. This can be pragmatically achieved by leveraging on IoT solutions and
Internet technologies such as smart transportation, smart grid, smart exploration and
mining and smart healthcare. With the adoption of these smart solutions, African
cities and industries will be adequately equipped with technologies to respond to
perennial problems in normal and emergency situations such as industrial hazards,
natural disasters, conflicts and insurgencies, scarcity and resource constraints,
infrastructural failures and inadequacies, conventional and cybercrime occurrences
and other forms of socio-economic challenges embattling the African region in a
sustainable manner.
Acknowledgements This work was funded by the Institute for Intelligent Systems and the
Department of Electrical and Electronic Science at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa.
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Chapter 8
IoT and Edge Computing as a Tool
for Bowel Activity Monitoring
Umit Deniz Ulusar, Erdinc Turk, Ahmet Sefa Oztas, Alp Erkan Savli,
Guner Ogunc, and Murat Canpolat
8.1 Introduction
The Internet of Things (IoT) is enabling several applications ranging from envi-
ronment to healthcare and medical fields [1, 2]. The main idea is the ubiquitous
presence around us with a variety of things or objects that are connected to the
Internet. A key application for the IoT-based technologies is wireless medical sensor
networks (WMSNs), which aim to observe patients’ health status remotely without
intervening his/her daily life and perform early diagnosis of possible diseases. For
this, researchers have been developing tiny sensors that can observe heartbeat, blood
pressure, temperature, and so on, apply signal processing algorithms, and then share
it through wireless connectivity with medical professionals. WMSNs are also an
indispensable tool for patients with certain disabilities and accessibility issues by
making remote monitoring possible and minimizing the necessity of hospital visits.
Also, they are beneficial for healthy and active people for monitoring their daily
activities and well-being. A typical example of this is a fall detection device which
can report the situation to an emergency responder.
Unfortunately, so far, the real-world application of IoT-based health monitor-
ing for mobile users suffered from energy constraints imposed by the batteries.
U. D. Ulusar () · E. Turk

Department of Computer Engineering, Akdeniz University, Antalya, Turkey
A. S. Oztas · A. E. Savli
Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Akdeniz University, Antalya, Turkey
G. Ogunc
Department of General Surgery, Akdeniz University, Antalya, Turkey
M. Canpolat
Department of Biophysics, Akdeniz University, Antalya, Turkey

134 U. D. Ulusar et al.
Typically, energy consumption for IoT devices is maximized during wireless

communication. Edge computing aims to process data produced by devices to be
closer to its origin instead of sending it to data centers.
In this chapter, we present a gastrointestinal track motility monitor (GTMM),
an IoT-driven eHealth device that is specifically designed for constant monitoring
of hospitalized patients after major abdominal surgery whose physiological status
requires close attention. Similarly, this type of solution employs sensors to collect
physiological information and processors for real-time data processing and uses
gateways to send the data or warnings to caregivers for further analysis.
8.2 Background
Auscultation is the typical mean of observing body sounds and is commonly used
in clinical environments. This technology exists since the early 1800s, and despite
all the improvements, the overall aim is to identify specific sounds within the body.
With the advent of technology, IoT-driven bioacoustic sensors can be utilized for
continuous monitoring. There are some studies in the literature that aim to use
bioacoustic sensors for observing pulmonary, heart, and intestinal sounds. Tang et al.
have developed an electronic stethoscope for observing heart sounds with embedded
processor and used Bluetooth for data transmission [3]. Similarly, Rach et al. have
developed a bioacoustic sensor prototype that can operate over long periods and
performed sound analysis [4]. In another research, Patil et al., have developed an
electronic stethoscope to observe heart rhythm [5].
Electronic stethoscopes are simple devices, and they are typically designed
for observing body sounds for short periods. In order to make them suitable
for long-term monitoring, a detection algorithm for the sound type of interest is
required. Various researchers have studied automatic and semiautomatic detection
of intestinal sounds. Some techniques such as fractal dimension [6], wavelet
decomposition [7], and neural networks [8] are used for short-term intestinal sounds
analysis. Other studies by Dimoulas et al. [9], Kim et al. [10], and Emoto et al. [11]
focused on more subtle change detections observed over longer durations.
For long-term monitoring of mobile users, another problem is the varying noise
that exists at every level and at every location of our daily lives. Two types of noise
require extra attention: environmental noise and body sounds. Some studies such as
Hadjileontiadis et al. [12, 13] and Dimoulas et al. [14] focused on signal denoising
and wavelet-based noise reduction. Jatupaiboon et al. [15] developed an electronic
stethoscope prototype with adaptive noise cancellation. The proposed prototype
acquires cardiac sounds and noises with two different microphones integrated in
the stethoscope. LMS algorithm for adaptive filtering is applied. Jiao et al. [16]
proposed a gradient adaptive step size LMS algorithm that uses two adaptive filters
to estimate gradients more accurately, for biomedical applications. Some researches
such as Ulusar [17] utilized classification techniques such as naive Bayesian and
minimum statistics and spectral subtraction for noise attenuation.
8 IoT and Edge Computing as a Tool for Bowel Activity Monitoring 135
Fig. 8.1 Bowel sounds (quiet period, noise, single burst, multiple burst) and their corresponding
power spectrum
8.2.1 Intestinal Sounds
The intestinal sounds (IS) refer to sounds produced within the small and large
intestines during digestion. They are typically characterized as a nonstationary burst
like signal and described as gurgling, rumbling, growling, and high pitched. These
sounds are occasionally contaminated by other artifacts such as heartbeat, move-
ment, breathing, and environmental noise [18]. Sound level varies and correlates
with the intensity and the location of the bowel movement. Bowel sound (BS) is
typically classified into two types: single burst (SB) and multiple bursts (MS) [18,
19]. Duration of single BS varies between 0.02 and 0.1 s and creates a spiky sound.
A detailed work on abdominal sound classification can be found in [20]. Figure 8.1
depicts some of the observed intestinal sounds.
8.3 Methodology
8.3.1 Bioacoustic Sensor
Two electret microphones (POM-5246P-R) are used for bowel activity monitoring.
The low-amplitude signals of the microphones were amplified with operational
amplifier (LM358) and were digitized using a 10-bit ADC at a sampling frequency
of 2048 Hz. The bias voltage of the operational amplifier circuit was set to be 1.55 V.
The system’s operating voltage was 3.3 V. Figure 8.2 shows the sensing device
design.
Fig. 8.2 IoT-driven sensor device
There are several methods of wireless communication such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi,

ZigBee, and GSM. Bluetooth is a major technology for wearable products and more
suitable for transferring small chunks of data in short distances. Wi-Fi is widely
used, and it provides serious data throughput in the ranges of Gbps. Typically, this
type of communication is not suitable for IoT applications because of high power
consumption. GSM uses various frequency ranges, and communication distance can
go up to a couple of hundred kilometers, but due to its energy consumption, it is only
suitable for low bandwidth data transfers. ZigBee is based on the IEEE802.15.4
protocol, operating at 2.4 GHz and suitable for short to mid-range applications. It
offers high security, robustness, and high scalability. Due to energy consumption and
data throughput rate, ZigBee module JN5168 (NXP, Sheffield, UK) is used for ADC
and wireless communication. It has a RISC 32-bit processor and 4 kB EEPROM, 32
kB RAM, and 256 kB flash. This module consumes less than 0.12 μA during deep
sleep state and less than 25 mA during communication state.
The open-circuit voltage changes with charging state of the battery. This
variability is an undesirable condition for operational amplifier output, and a voltage
regulator is used to generate 3.3 V fixed supply voltage. Additional capacitors are
used to eliminate noise. Figure 8.3 shows the circuit design of the low noise voltage
regulator design.
Figure 8.4 shows the circuit diagram of the battery charging module. A micro-
USB jack is used for power connection and battery charging, and full situations are
indicated with red and green LEDs.
Fig. 8.3 Regulator circuit scheme
Fig. 8.4 Battery charger circuit
Figure 8.5 shows the one circuit diagram of operational amplification unit applied
on both channels.
Figure 8.6 shows the custom box which was designed to hold the microphones,
electronic parts, and the battery. In order to amplify body sounds, the bottom part has
a conic shape similar to a stethoscope chest piece. Microphone 1 is located inside
the stethoscope’s conic metal part in order to obtain intestinal sounds. Microphone
2 is set to the upper side of the bioacoustic sensor to obtain ambient noise. Covering
box, made by a 3D printer, is utilized to hold the electronic circuit and battery.
8.3.2 Signal Processing Steps
The sound intensity drops with distance, and microphone orientation plays an
important role on which sounds will be acquired. By utilizing two microphones,
we aimed to observe environmental sounds with one microphone and the body
Fig. 8.5 Operational amplifier circuit
Fig. 8.6 Bioacoustic sensor mechanical design
Fig. 8.7 90-s recordings from the internal and peripheral microphone
sounds with the other. The internal microphone (Mic.1) observes bowel sounds and
ambient noise. Peripheral microphone (Mic.2) observes only ambient noise. Figure
8.7 shows 90-s-long sample recording. The blue line indicates the signals observed
Fig. 8.8 5-s-long sample from the entire signal
Fig. 8.9 5-s-long signal after high-pass filter and normalization
by the peripheral microphone, and the red line shows the internal microphone. The
effect of the environmental noise is visible in both recordings, but the intensities
vary.
Figure 8.8 shows a closer look of the observed noise by the microphones. Single
bursts with high intensities are observed at 1.2 and 4.5 s.
The ZigBee module has a 500 MHz RISC-based processing unit and 292 kB
internal memory. Most of the signal processing is performed on the edge device to
minimize transferred data. Only signal chunks detected as activity (intestinal or not)
are transferred for further processing. Data is processed as 10-s chunks buffered in
the edge device’s memory. Initially, 10-Hz high-pass filter is applied to remove DC
offset, and signals are normalized (Fig. 8.9).
Hilbert transform-based envelope is used on both signals, and activity regions are
detected by using an empirically chosen threshold value (0.02). Very short threshold
crossings (<0.05 s) are discarded. Figure 8.10 shows the application of the Hilbert
envelope on both signals.
Fig. 8.10 Hilbert envelope and application on signals from the internal and peripheral micro-
phone. The black solid line shows the temporal envelope obtained using Hilbert transform
Fig. 8.11 Entire signal with envelopes
The start and the end time of activities and the signal above thresholds is
transferred to the edge computing unit with more processing power and memory
for further processing. In our case, this was a personal computer. Figure 8.11 shows
the signals obtained from both microphones and the data transferred to the edge
computing unit. There were 19 signal chunks for the peripheral microphone and 53
signal chunks for the signal obtained from internal microphone.
Fig. 8.12 Noise chunk observed by both microphones
8.3.3 Intestinal Activity Detection
Intestinal activities are detected by using rule-based and spectrum subtraction-based

detection algorithm. In statistics, the outlier values are typically detected by using
the mean and the standard deviation of the data. Similarly, we used the standard
deviation of the signal (updated when a signal chunk is received) of the peripheral
microphone. If an activity is observed by both microphones and the intensity of the
signal obtained from the peripheral microphone is more than 3 times the standard
deviation of the noise signal, we assumed that the activity observed in internal
microphone is due to the external noise and called that activity as non-BS. Figure
8.12 shows an example of a signal chunk where environmental noise was observed
by both microphones.
The amplitude and the duration of the intestinal sounds vary between each
patient. The signal is nonstationary, and in order to identify BSs, we utilized spectral
features. Figure 8.13 shows the average spectrogram of the signals. Hamming
window is applied on both signals to extract power spectrograms. Window length is
set to 0.12 s with 50% overlap which is greater than the possible longest single burst
intestinal activity (0.1 s). The effect of noise on both spectrums around 400 Hz is
clearly visible.
Around 97.5% of the bowel sounds’ signal energy is located between 100 and
500 Hz [19]. For each chunk, spectral centroid, spectral bandwidth, and subband
normalized energy were estimated from the frequency spectrum between 100 and
500 Hz. We used naive Bayesian approach with Kernel density estimation [21,
22] for the classification of chunks. For NB-based classification, the features are
assumed statistically independent. With observed feature values x1 , . . . ,xn , the
posterior probability of each class c is estimated as follows:
Fig. 8.13 Power spectrogram of signals obtained by microphones
D
p (x, c) = p(c) p (xi |c)
i=1
The class with the maximum posterior probability is assigned to the frame.
During training, an expert marks the chunks into two groups, BS and non-BS.
The algorithm learns the probability distribution of each class p(c) and the class
dependent feature distribution p(xi |c).
Finally, signals marked as BS are sent for further analysis. The intensity,
frequency, and the duration of the signals are used for long-term bowel activity
monitoring and abnormality detection.
8.4 Conclusion
IoT-related healthcare systems are low-powered networked devices that can collect
and share biophysical data over time and provide intelligent decision for preventing
serious illnesses. With the help of clinical decision support software, they have the
power to transform healthcare and provide more precise and timely decisions.
This work introduces an edge computing and IoT-driven monitoring system for
bowel sounds. Signal chunks of intestinal activity is marked and transferred to
cloud-based analysis system. The advantages of edge computing are utilized by
avoiding the need for energy expensive raw data communication.
Acknowledgment This work is supported by Akdeniz University Scientific Research Projects

Coordination Unit (FYL-2015-1043).
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Chapter 9
Application of Cloud Computing
and Internet of Things to Improve Supply
Chain Processes
S. Kanimozhi Suguna and Suresh Nanda Kumar
9.1 Introduction to IoT and Cloud Computing
In today’s hypercompetitive environments in which competition is between supply

chains and not between firms, individual firms need to effectively manage increas-
ingly global and extending supply chain activities. The supply chain has become the
central organizing unit in today’s global industries [48]. As the Internet of Things
(IoT) is opening up new business opportunities, firms are trying to understand the
impacts of the IoT revolution on their supply chain. IDC [31] predicts that the IoT
base will grow at a 17.5% compound annual growth rate (CAGR), reaching 28.1
billion installed units by 2020, up from 9.1 billion in 2013, and the value of the
market will reach $7.1 trillion by 2020, up from $1.9 trillion in 2013.
The IoT has a significant impact on several aspects of everyday life and behavior
of potential users [5]. Assisted living, smart homes, e-health, and enhanced learning
are a few examples of possible application scenarios in which the IoT will play
a leading role in the near future [4]. The IoT will provide new opportunities for
services and applications able to leverage the interconnection of physical and virtual
realms [50], and firms in most industries will rapidly adopt IoT-enabled applications
in order to stay competitive.
Deutsche Bahn, the German Railways and cargo carrier, installed a network-wide
monitoring system to manage its entire rail network which comprises over 1 billion
supply chain “nodes,” collecting data on each segment of track, rail car, station,
engine, and switch and monitoring the condition of all of these things in real time.
S. Kanimozhi Suguna
Department of CSE, School of Computing, SASTRA Deemed to be University,
S. Nanda Kumar ()
CII Institute of Logistics, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

146 S. Kanimozhi Suguna and S. Nanda Kumar
The collected data are fed into a control tower that aggregates them every 5 s to
provide near-real-time information across the entire fleet. Deutsche Bahn has used
these data to improve risk management practices such as real-time rerouting and
optimization, considering all existing network traffic through nodes [45]. Whirlpool
is another example of using the IoT for internal supply chain optimization in routing
work and locating misplaced inventory. Instead of using bar codes or a similar
solution, Whirlpool used radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags and readers
across a manufacturing plant to give managers and operators real-time access to
information for inbound logistics to the paint line [45].
According to the Gartner Press Release [21], the following technologies will
be extensively used in the coming years to become digital businesses. These
technologies are Bioacoustic Sensing; Digital Security; Smart Workspace; Con-
nected Home; 3D Bioprinting Systems; Affective Computing; Speech-to-Speech
Translation; Internet of Things; Cryptocurrencies; Wearable User Interfaces; Con-
sumer 3D Printing; Machine-to-Machine Communication Services; Mobile Health
Monitoring; Enterprise 3D Printing; 3D Scanners; Consumer Telematics. The IoT
can be used by the various partners of the supply chain to monitor the supply
chain execution process in real time and improve the efficiency and effectiveness
of supply chain [53]. Recent developments in the IoT have made it possible to
achieve high visibility in the supply chain. The location of arbitrary individual
things can be determined at any point in time by all appropriate supply chain
partners [22]. For example, the IoT benefits the food and agricultural product
supply chain by improving the visualization and traceability of agriculture products
and ensuring people’s food safety [66]. Industrial deployment of the IoT provides
development of an ideal platform for decentralized management of warehouses
and collaborative warehouse order fulfillment with RFID, ambient intelligence, and
multi-agent system [56].
Ravi and Arora [3] describe organizations as constantly engaged in actions. If an
organization does not take actions, it cannot remain solvent, and if the organization
consistently exercises poor judgment in the actions that it takes, it is destined to
fail. Organizations do not have minds, and they do not make decisions, they are
institutions that empower individual agents to make decisions on their behalf, and
empower other individuals to carry out the actions associated with these decisions.
These decision making agents can be individuals or groups. The complex nature of
organizational decisions creates information overload for individual agents, causing
them to engage in a number of information processing shortcuts, which threaten
the quality of their decisions. The ability to access infrastructures, platforms, and
software services based on what is needed and paying for only what is used put
start-up enterprises and small and medium enterprises at an advantageous position
vis-à-vis the competition from larger enterprises and firms. This also gives them
an edge in the market and an almost an equal position with much larger firms and
enterprises. This provides a level playing field and can put pressure on enterprises
that have not yet realized the potential and impact that cloud computing can have
when developing or implementing their strategies. There can also be pressure when
the organizational culture is not open to emergent market opportunities and has a
9 Application of Cloud Computing and Internet of Things to Improve Supply. . . 147
conservative approach to technology adoption that is best addressed by leveraging

cloud solutions. When an enterprise does not consider the strategic implications of
cloud computing on the existing and new market opportunities, it can result in areas
of high pressure, and the following risks can be the outcome:
• New entrants can claim a part of the market share and thereby a segment of
traditional market dominance.
• Strategies that do not address competitor capabilities.
• Less-than-expected benefits received from technology-dependent solutions.
Utility services and service supply chain enterprises have traditionally extracted
value and advantage from the ownership of technology and systems. This value
and advantage may be reduced in a market in which technology and systems can be
easily and rapidly acquired, expanded, or contracted based on need and according to
the financial resources available with the firm; development and management costs
are shared among a large base of users; and cost is directly associated with resources
used. In an environment in which computing is a technology utility, there is less
concern for how the infrastructure, platform, or software services are developed.
More focus is paid to organizational needs, expected benefits to be delivered, and
the value that can be obtained from the computing utility. Here, the concept of agile
enterprise comes into focus. The agile enterprise takes advantage and benefits from
solutions that can be used as needed and discarded when they no longer provide
value. Those enterprises are nimble and are highly responsive and sensitive to
market opportunities and leverage supply infrastructures, platforms, and software
services, creating a value supply chain that can be reconfigured as needs and market
conditions change. These are highly adaptive and agile and are able to hedge risks by
making use of technology resources such as infrastructure, platform, and software
offered by external service providers. The view of computing as a utility and the
delivery of cloud solutions as a supply chain of information system solutions put
greater pressure on enterprises that contain a culture that is not accepting of utility
solutions, a structure that does not facilitate cooperative planning and integration of
utility solutions, and processes that cannot take advantage of computing solutions
provided as a supply chain of utilities. Enterprises that fail to consider the impacts
of cloud solutions seen as a computing utility brought together into a supply chain
of IT capabilities may experience areas of pressure resulting in the following risk
outcomes:
• Overinvestment of resources in planning and building internally developed
information system solutions
• Less-than-optimal results when value-producing cloud utilities are missing from
the total solution
• Duplication of effort when specialist services available through cloud providers
are not integrated as part of system management
• Less-than-expected results when utility components are not integrated into and
managed as an information system capability supply chain
9.2 Supply Chain Management
The supply chain itself is an arrangement of associations, individuals, exercises,

data, and assets engaged with the arranging, moving, or capacity of an item or
administration from provider to client (in reality more like a “web” than a “chain”).
Inventory network exercises change regular assets, crude materials, and parts into a
completed item that is conveyed to the end client.
Conversely, supply chain management, as characterized by the Council of Sup-
ply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP), “incorporates the arranging and
administration of all exercises engaged with sourcing, obtainment, transformation,
and coordination administration. It likewise incorporates the vital segments of
coordination and cooperation with channel accomplices, which can be providers,
mediators, outsider specialist co-ops, and clients.”
Fundamentally, supply chain management incorporates free market activity
administration inside and crosswise over organizations and commonly “incorporates
the majority of the coordination administration exercises noted above, and also
fabricating operations, and it drives coordination of procedures and exercises with
and crosswise over promoting, deals, item configuration, back and data innovation”
[68].
Contingent upon one’s view, a portion of the capacities recorded here might be
incorporated into the inventory network and coordination association:
• Procurement: The procurement of merchandise or administrations from an
outside outer source
• Demand determining: Estimating the amount of an item or administration that
clients will buy
• Customer administration and request administration: Tasks related to satisfying
a request for products or administrations set by a client
• Inventory: Planning and administration
• Transportation: For contract and private
• Warehousing: Public and private
• Materials dealing with and bundling: Movement, insurance, stockpiling, and
control of materials and items utilizing manual, semi-robotized, and mechanized
hardware
• Facility arrange: Location choice in an association’s production network orga-
nized
Production network administration is likewise entwined with operations admin-
istration, which comprises exercises that make an incentive by changing sources of
info (i.e., crude materials) into yields (i.e., merchandise and enterprises). The two
exercises bolster the assembling procedure.
Fig. 9.1 SCOR model
9.2.1 SCOR Model
Another approach to see the production network is through the SCOR display, which
was created by the Supply Chain Council (SCC) [69] to instruct, comprehend, and
oversee supply chains. It is a model to both characterize and measure the execution
of an association’s production network.
The SCOR display is sorted out around the five noteworthy administration forms
(see Fig. 9.1):
• Plan: Alignment of assets to request
• Make: Conversion or esteem included exercises inside a production network
operation
• Source: Buying or procuring materials or administrations
• Deliver: All client collaboration, from getting a request to conclusive conveyance
and establishment
• Return: All procedures that turn around material or administration streams from
the client in reverse through the store network
This gives a wide definition to the inventory network, which features its
significance to the association and how it makes measurements to gauge execution.
9.2.2 An Integrated Value-Added Supply Chain
The objective of the present store network is to accomplish combination through the
joint effort to accomplish visibility downstream toward the client and upstream to
providers. As it were, a large number of the present organizations have possessed
the capacity to “substitute data for stock” to accomplish efficiencies. The times
of having “islands of robotization,” which may enhance association’s inventory
network at the cost of another person’s (for instance, provider), are finished.
The ideas of collaboration and basic reasoning helped by innovation empower
associations to work with different capacities inside and with different individ-
uals from their store network, including clients, providers, and accomplices, to
Fig. 9.2 The value chain
accomplish new levels of productivity and to utilize their inventory network to

accomplish an upper hand that spotlights on increasing the value of the client rather
than simply being a cost focus inside the association.
The value chain model, began by Michael Porter, demonstrates the esteem
making exercises of an association, which as should be obvious in Fig. 9.2 depend
intensely on inventory network capacities.
In a valued chain, each of a company’s inside exercises recorded after the figure
increases the value of the last item or administration by changing contributions to
yields.
• Inbound coordinations: Receiving, warehousing, and stock control of info
materials
• Operations: Transforming contributions to the last item or administration to make
esteem
• Outbound coordinations: Actions that get the last item to the client, including
warehousing and request satisfaction
• Showcasing and deals: Activities identified with purchasers acquiring the item,
including promotion, estimation, appropriation channel determination, and so
forth
• Administration: Activities that keep up and enhance an item’s esteem, including
client bolster, repair, guaranteed benefit, and so forth
Bolster exercises distinguished by Porter can likewise increase the value of an
association:
• Obtainment: Purchasing crude materials and different sources of info that are
utilized as a part of significant worth making exercises
• Innovation improvement: Research and advancement, process computerization,
and comparative exercises that help esteem chain exercises
• Human asset administration: Recruiting, preparing, improvement, and pay of
representatives
• Firm foundation: Finance, legitimate, quality control, etc
Porter prescribed value chain analysis to research regions that speak to potential
qualities that can be utilized to accomplish an upper hand. As should be obvious,
the inventory network mixes it up of ways, so it ought to be a basic region of center
[65].
Table 9.1 Supply chain leveraging effect

Current Supply chain improvement option Sales increase option
Sales $1,000,000 $1,000,000 $1,250,000
Cost of material $650,000 (65%) $600,000 (60%) $812,500 (65%)
Production costs $150,000 (15%) $150,000 (15%) $187,500 (15%)
Fixed costs $100,000 (10%) $100,000 (15%) $100,000 (8%)
Profit $100,000 (10%) $150,000 (15%) $150,000 (15%)
9.2.3 Levaraging the Supply Chain
Since inventory network costs speak to a critical segment of an organization’s

business, it is not hard to perceive any reason why there is such an emphasis on
it. This outcome in a “utilizing” impact, as any dollar saved money on inventory
network, contributes as the same to the primary concern as a considerably bigger
and frequently unattainable increment in deals (will change in light of an individual
organization’s overall revenue).
Table 9.1 represents this through a case of a business that is assessing two key
choices: (1) decrease its inventory network costs by roughly 6.5% through more
compelling arrangements with a merchant, or (2) increment deals by 25% (which
will mostly without a doubt likewise add to deals and promoting costs). The utilizing
impact of the store network as the generally little cost diminishes contributes as
much to the primary concern as the 25% deals increment (which is quite hard to
achieve in any economy) is represented.
The production network cost decrease in this illustration has amazing outcomes;
however, you need to remember that “you can’t get blood from a stone.” Through
Lean strategy, a group-based type of constant change that spotlights on the
recognizable proof and disposal of waste, it can make a “change in outlook” that
can make process (and cost) upgrades that were already thought unimaginable.
9.2.4 Supply Chain Strategy for a Competitive Advantage
Production network and logistics capacities were seen fundamentally as cost focuses
to be controlled. It is just in the previous 20 years or with the goal that it has turned
out to be evident that it can be utilized for an upper hand also.
To achieve this, an association ought to set up aggressive needs that their
production network must need to fulfill inner and outer clients. They should then
connect the chosen aggressive needs to their store network and coordination forms.
Krajewski et al. [67] recommend breaking an association’s aggressive needs into
cost, quality, time, and adaptability capacity gatherings:
• Cost methodology: Focuses on conveying an item or administration to the client

at the most reduced conceivable cost without yielding quality. Walmart has been
the minimal effort pioneer in retail by working a productive store network.
• Time system: This technique can be as far as speed of conveyance, reaction time,
or even item improvement time. Dell has been a prime case of a producer that has
exceeded expectations at reaction time by amassing, testing, and delivering PCs
in as meager as a couple of days. FedEx is known for quick, on-time conveyances
of little bundles.
• Quality procedure: Consistent, brilliant merchandise or administrations require a
solid, safe production network to convey on this guarantee. On the off chance that
Sony had a substandard store network with high harm levels, it would not make
any difference to the client that their gadgets are of the most elevated quality.
• Adaptability technique: Can come in different structures, for example, volume,
assortment, and customization. A considerable lot of the present online business
organizations, for example, Amazon, offer a lot of adaptability in a large number
of these classifications.
Much of the time, an association may concentrate on more than one of these
procedures, and notwithstanding when concentrating on one, it does not imply that
they will offer disappointing execution on the others (just not “best in class” maybe).
9.3 Applications of IoT in Logistics and SCM
Figure 9.3 demonstrates the different IoT applications in the supply chain. Supply
chain advancement is basic to practical upper hands for firms. Supply chain
innovation has been defined as “a change (incremental or radical) within a supply
chain network, supply chain technology, or supply chain process (or a combination
of these) that can take place in a company function, within a company, in an
industry or in a supply chain in order to enhance new value creation for the
stakeholder [2]. Production network information will progressively be created by
a system of sensors, RFID labels, meters, actuators, GPSs, and different gadgets
and frameworks [11]. IBM [30] recommends the smarter supply chain of the
future has the instrumentation, interconnectedness, and knowledge to anticipate,
if not forestalled, disturbances before they happen. From generation floor and
warehousing to the conveyance and store racking, the IoT empowers production
network accomplices to make brilliant inventory network by giving continuous
information and business knowledge for all accomplices in the inventory network.
Firms will put resources into the IoT to build deceivability of materials stream,
decrease the loss of materials, and lower circulation costs. This is delineated in
Fig. 9.4.
As the IoT enters into center business forms and an expanding number of
firms put resources into green store network, utilizing the IoT for keen production
network will turn into a subject of awesome enthusiasm for the chiefs [40]. The
IoT for keen store network will produce an incentive in stock administration,
preventive support, and transportation and permit multipath interchanges with the
accomplices and clients, rich information examination, and opportune reactions to
sudden occasions. Notwithstanding, the estimation of the IoT can be acknowledged
just when directors completely comprehend what information the IoT gadgets
gather, how the information ought to be handled, and when they should settle on the
choices on store network issues. It is likewise essential to break down specialized
and administrative security dangers of the IoT [35].
General engineering will have a noteworthy bearing on the field itself and should
be researched [24]. For effective IoT-based production network administration,
fundamental IoT engineering should be built up and refreshed persistently to
commission and decommission different IoT resources. Reaidy et al. [56] propose
an IOT foundation for synergistic distribution center request satisfaction in light of
RFID, surrounding insight, and multi-operator framework. It comprises a physical
gadgets layer, a middleware surrounding the stage, a multi-operator framework, and
an undertaking asset arranging. It incorporates a base up approach with choice help
systems, for example, self-association and transaction conventions.
For brilliant store network, the essential engineering incorporates four layers
[40]: (1) question layer, (2) correspondence layer, (3) application layer, and (4)
Fig. 9.3 The various IoT applications in the supply chain

Fig. 9.4 Cost reduction and optimal distribution network design using IoT
information benefit layer. Each layer has center segments and basic functionalities
depicted underneath: object layer comprises physical protests, for example, gadgets,
machines, sensors, RFID labels, and peruser. The question layer is in charge of
detecting nature, recognizing and following articles, and gathering information.
The physical articles persuade scaled down to be more vitality productive, area
autonomous, and financially savvy [59]. RFID labels and sensors are frequently
installed in the machines and gadgets.
Application layer comprises an arrangement of issue particularly programming
devices that associate with clients, take care of issues, process information, and
offer arrangements with different applications. The application layer is in charge
of displaying information and data to the clients in an easy to use arrange. While
gadget-to-gadget applications do not really require information perception, more
human-focused IoT applications give representation to exhibit data to end clients
in a natural and straightforward route and to permit collaboration with the earth. It
is critical for IoT applications to be worked with knowledge, so the gadgets helps
in working with it. A standout among the essential results of the IoT is a gigantic
measure of information created from gadgets associated with the Internet [24]. At
the demand of the clients, a continuous examination of store network information is
led for basic leadership. The cloud information benefit framework ought to have the
capacity to powerfully organize demands and arrangement assets to such an extent
that basic solicitations are served continuously [24]. Information mining innovations
are utilized to find learning covered up in the ocean of information [10]. Not at
all like the other three layers which are regularly possessed by an individual firm,
the information benefit layer is frequently claimed and overseen by open cloud
specialist organizations.
The IoT encourages the improvement of heaps of industry-situated and client-
particular IoT applications [40]. Although gadgets and systems give the physical
availability, IoT applications empower the gadget-to-gadget and human-to-gadget
Fig. 9.5 Capabilities in IoT logistics
communications in a solid and vigorous way. IoT applications on gadgets need

to guarantee that information/messages have been gotten and followed up on
appropriately in an auspicious way. For instance, transportation and coordination
applications screen the status of the shipped merchandise, for example, organic
products, new cut create, meat, and dairy items. Amid the transportation, the
preservation status (e.g., temperature, moistness, and stun) is checked always, and
proper moves are made consequently to dodge waste when the status is out of range.
For instance, FedEx utilizes SenseAware to watch the temperature, area, and other
imperative indications of a bundle, including when it is opened and whether it was
messed with the route. Figure 9.5 underneath indicates how IoT is utilized as a part
of coordinations in thing level following, following vehicles utilizing telematics,
following material taking care of gear like forklifts, and other whole deal following.
As the innovation advances, correspondence and handling capacities of the IoT
are winding up increasingly open and flexible, and progresses in interconnectivity
will drive the want to make utilization of the IoT’s possibilities [59]. Rising
innovation refers to innovation of a work in progress or at the phase of the
verification of idea (POC), which has a high danger of specialized disappointment
yet, however, has possibly noteworthy market esteem. For instance, checking and
controlling innovation is moving to inconspicuous modest and vitality productive
remote sensor innovation which enables applications to be sent all the more to
adaptable areas autonomously. Portable crowd sensing is a promising advancement
where people with detecting and processing gadgets on the whole offer information
and concentrate data to gauge and guide marvels of regular intrigue [20]. The
sensor arrangement is advancing toward a setting mindful of self-sorting out, self-
repairing, and self-sufficient system. Innovation for data sharing and coordinated
effort is moving to client arranged, conveyed insight framework, things-to-things
joint effort situations, and things-to-people cooperation. For more secure data
sharing and coordinated effort between gadgets, the rising innovation will reinforce
interoperability, network, protection, and knowledge highlights of the IoT. The fate
of enormous information and information investigation incorporates setting mindful
information handling, subjective preparing, and enhancement [41].
Supply chain IoT gadgets create a huge measure of information that should
be gathered and prepared progressively to give data on status, area, usefulness,
and condition of items and administrations. Since a lot of sensor information
continuously will build workloads of gadgets at an exponential rate, it is not practical
to process all the gushing information accessible to those gadgets. Setting mindful
information preparing empowers sensors and gadgets to utilize setting particular
data, for example, area, temperature, and the accessibility of a specific gadget to
choose what kinds of information to gather and decipher to give pertinent data to
basic leadership. For instance, setting mindful information handling can convey
significant data to a truck driver by knowing the truck’s flow area (e.g., on an
interstate, a congested inward city zone, or at a dangerous assembling plant). By
incorporating the human perception process into IoT applications, an intellectual
information handling application figures out how to detect things, foresee future
occasions, and frame conclusions in view of confirmation under various conditions.
For instance, intellectual information preparing utilizes computerized reasoning
procedures to comprehend the warehousing condition, forms ecological informa-
tion, for example, chemicals and contamination for a director, and uses an input
from the administrator to learn further. The enhancement of information preparing
is basic to an opportune procedure of the persistent stream of gigantic measures of
information. Mechanical advances in streamlined information handling help settle
on opportune choices in huge information applications in the keen store network.
Figure 9.6 underneath demonstrates the different IoT organization structures amid
the distinctive eras, past, present, and future.
IoT innovation stage is a mechanical establishment and improvement methodol-
ogy with which each organization builds up their IoT applications for new esteem
age and the upper hand. These stages are produced for the most part by IT firms
and utilized by non-IT firms. IT firms set IoT models and build up an assortment of
foundational advances for modern machines, ecological sensors, home apparatuses,
and medicinal services gear. The decision of the IoT innovation stages by non-IT
firms ought to be made regarding the general business and innovation methodology.
As of now, there are four generally embraced innovation stages: exclusive IoT
innovation, open development IoT innovation, industry union IoT innovation, and
IoT as a Service (TaaS).
Exclusive IoT innovation has been created by many firms to procure an early-
mover advantage, to end up plainly an innovation pioneer, and to be marked as a
Fig. 9.6 IoT network architecture in different periods
trailblazer in their industry. For instance, Apple has its own licensed exclusive IoT
innovation for in-home gadget correspondence, HomeKit. Exclusive IoT innovation
is broadly produced for checking and control applications.
Open development IoT innovation is frequently utilized by a firm whose
advances are constrained in making esteem included IoT applications. Open inno-
vation has been viewed as applicable basically to “high-innovation” enterprises and
has gotten more prominent consideration in light of the verbal confrontation about
globalization and the potential for the R&D capacity to be outsourced [14]. Open-
source IoT stages are favored and are more alluring contrasted and the exclusive
IoT innovation stages because of the accompanying reasons. To begin with, the
utilization of the open source is relied upon to empower the speedier combination
of new IoT arrangements over the application spaces [49]. Second, the utilization of
the open source has been accounted for to accelerate the appropriation of a product
innovation in a base up form. At last, when seen from the social surplus point of
view, the industry in view of the open-source stages has been found to give bigger
aggregate welfare to the business structures [16].
Open advancement is known to quicken development process and make coop-
erative energy between endeavors of various innovation abilities. The main organi-
zation starts the open advancement and makes an open development coordination
with other littler organizations which contribute their mechanical know-how to a
particular issue. For instance, the Kimberly-Clark Digital Innovation Lab (D’Lab)
conveyed open-source development to the buyer bundle merchandise class with the
second yearly KChallenge start-up rivalry at the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show
(CES) in Las Vegas [36]. The triumphant new businesses will get the chance to
pilot a task with one of Kimberly-Clark’s worldwide brands, for example, Depends,
Scott, and Kotex, to discover better approaches to interface with their customers.
Kimberly-Clark fills in as an orchestrator and a facilitator of advancement, and
taking an interest in new company assumes a basic part in propelling development
for different brands of Kimberly-Clark.
Industry partnership IoT innovation has been made by driving IT firms to

build up industry models and multi-gadget interoperability and to give clients
esteem included administrations, for example, controlling various home systems
administration gadgets. Driving IT firms make a consortium, joint wander, or
organization. Google, through its in-home gadget unit Nest Labs, has propelled an
industry organization working together with a few different firms to set a standard
called thread for Internet-associated home gadget interchanges. Members of the
business cooperation called the Thread Group incorporate Google, Samsung Elec-
tronics, and ARM Holdings. AllSeen Alliance, another gathering of more than 100
organizations including Microsoft and Qualcomm, was built up for the advancement
and development of an interoperable associate network and interchange structure.
The utilization of the business organization together with an open advancement is a
decent improvement system for data sharing and coordinated effort applications.
Things as a Service (TaaS) is given as administration tasks like people in general
cloud administrations. The rise of TaaS lies in the adaptation of unnecessary IoT
limit, economies of scale and extent of shared IoT resources, pervasive availability
by means of the Internet and remote systems, commoditization of IoT gadgets
and applications, and industry institutionalization and interconnectivity. While TaaS
imparts normal attributes to open cloud administrations, novel offers may originate
from consolidating IoT structural parts, for example, physical items, arrangement,
information stockpiling, and applications, and giving altered administrations to
firms on a compensation as-you-go premise. For enormous information and infor-
mation investigation, the industry organization together and TaaS are appropriate
innovation stages.
9.4 Capabilities of IoT-Based Supply Chain Application
Based on the technology trends, this section discusses three capabilities of IoT-based
supply chain applications: (1) monitoring and control, (2) information sharing and
collaboration, and (3) big data and IoT data analytics.
9.4.1 Monitoring and Control
As per the Digital Agenda for Europe [17], observing and controlling allude to
the control of any framework, gadget, or system through computerized techniques
oversaw by a control unit with or without the capacity to show data. IoT-empowered
checking and control frameworks are picking up fame in the natural and assembling
areas, where organizations have worked fundamental applications, for example,
constant perception with sensors and cautioning about machines and gadgets [7,
39, 60]. The IoT-empowered observing and controlling innovations are basic in
numerous business forms identified with inventory network exercises, for example,
assembling, coordinations, and transportation. Observing and control frameworks

gather and send key information on resource condition, hardware execution, testing,
vitality utilization, and natural conditions and enable administrators and mechanized
controllers to react to changes progressively anyplace, whenever. These capacities
are vital to keen production network exercises where deceivability and traceability
of articles are required.
Radio recurrence ID framework (RFID) is a piece of the IoT frameworks iden-
tified with inventory network exercises. RFID permits programmed recognizable
proof and information catch utilizing radio waves, a tag, and a peruser. The tag
can store the bigger number of information than customary scanner tags. The tag
contains information as the electronic product code (EPC), a worldwide RFID-
based thing distinguishing proof framework created by the auto-ID center. RFID
perusers can recognize, track, and screen the items connected with labels all around,
naturally, and progressively, if necessary.
Notwithstanding the RFID, remote advancements have assumed a key part in
mechanical observing and control frameworks. In an average production network,
observing and control applications utilize sensors, GPS, RFID labels, and sensor
systems to limit scattering, robbery, misfortune, and decay in the distribution center,
transportation, and store racks [26]. Sensors are utilized to keep up merchandise
at the right temperature and shield them from substance spills to waste [23].
Sensor systems screen movement conditions, and route gadgets track the area of
transportation vehicles to make steering more proficient. Wireless Sensor Networks
(WSNs) are playing more and more a key role in several application scenarios
such as healthcare, agriculture, environment monitoring, and smart metering [44].
Remote sensor arranges (WSN) comprise spatially dispersed self-sufficient sensor-
prepared gadgets to screen physical or ecological conditions and can participate
with RFID frameworks to better track the status of things, for example, their area,
temperature, and developments [4].
WSN has been principally utilized as a part of frosty chain coordinations which
includes the transportation of temperature delicate items along with an inventory
network through warm and refrigerated bundling strategies [29, 63]. WSN is
additionally utilized for upkeep and following frameworks. General electric conveys
sensors in its fly motors, turbines, and wind ranches. By dissecting information
continuously, GE spares time and expenses because of convenient preventive
support. American Airline additionally utilizes sensors fit for catching 30 terabytes
of information for every flight for administrations, for example, safeguard upkeep.
9.4.2 Information Sharing and Collaboration on Cloud

Computing Architecture
Assets that put resources into store network connections empower data sharing and
coordinated effort between inventory network accomplices [51, 54]. To accomplish
SCM destinations effectively, firms need to lead a progression of SCM exercises.
Inventory network accomplices must see exact, current, and solid data from different
firms with a specific end goal to encourage data sharing and joint effort [52].
To boost SCM’s maximum capacity, inventory network accomplices require data
sharing and coordinated effort. Data sharing and coordinated effort allude to the
electronic development of data and reason-driven cooperation between individuals,
among individuals and things, and between things.
Data sharing and collaboration applications improve the basic leadership of the
channel accomplices through better deceivability of material stream in the produc-
tion network. Between authoritative information sharing turns out to be ongoing
by means of remote interchanges. As production network accomplice’s increment
data sharing and cooperation exercises, they lessen between firm vulnerability and
reinforce vital relationship [37, 42].
Remote sensors are generally utilized for data sharing and joint effort among
items and human leaders. Undertakings can enhance their abilities by utilizing
the IoT-related data sharing systems inside and crosswise over enterprises [43].
Between gadget data sharing and coordinated effort, there is an advantage from
the institutionalization of correspondence conventions and gadgets. Checking and
control segments are frequently implanted into the data sharing and cooperation
gadgets and identify a predefined occasion which triggers data sharing and joint
effort among individuals and things. Late research demonstrates that there exists
more potential use of IoT in data serious divisions, for example, medicinal services
benefits, because of data sharing capacity of the IoT [64]. Data sharing enables
gadgets and individuals to work together in the meantime, with a similar data
gathered or recovered from numerous sources. Store network accomplices can share
data created by IoT gadgets to track between authoritative calculated streams of
materials and items and team up their conveyance exercises in view of the level of
stock and the rate of offers. The data sharing and joint effort will be more gainful
for worldwide production network accomplices where the vulnerability of lead time
is more prominent than for the residential store network accomplices.
One key innovation of the IoT for data sharing and joint effort is fast system inno-
vation [62]. The capability of the IoT for production network will be acknowledged
by means of IoT institutionalization with which gadgets from various makers share
data consistently among inventory network accomplices. Measures are required for
bidirectional correspondence and data trade among things, their condition, and their
advanced partners that have an enthusiasm for checking, controlling, or helping the
things [5].
A cloud computing architecture will be highly suited in such data sharing
environments, integrating the full extent of capabilities that cloud providers offer
with internal resources to provide a comprehensive technical support and delivery
solution. Cloud computing promises to enhance and optimize the technical capabil-
ities of enterprises. Resource sharing in a multitenant infrastructure enables clients
of cloud computing services who independently may not be able to make the invest-
ment for the newest technology solutions or to create the redundancy necessary to
provide 100% availability. Resource constraints have caused enterprises to attempt
to do more with fewer resources or to plan for redundancy only for the most critical
devices, potentially leaving the enterprise vulnerable to denial-of-service attacks

or at risk to outages resulting from device failure. In addition to a resilient and
extensible technical architecture, cloud providers offer other benefits such as human
resources, including individuals with specialized skills or personnel available on a
24/7 basis, which may otherwise have been outside the tenant’s reach. Technology
and people come together in an environment in which policies and processes, as
well as tools and performance aids, contribute to the ability of cloud suppliers
to deliver exceptional levels of service to their clients. The advantages that result
from sharing technical, human, and other resources may not automatically benefit
the clients/tenants. To maximize the advantage from the cloud computing systems,
enterprises need to understand the resource capabilities they possess in-house as
well as the resources that the external cloud services supplier makes available.
Understanding what capabilities are offered and how they can be combined with
internal resources, and developing a plan to leverage these combined resources,
will set apart those enterprises that achieve exceptional results. To leverage both
internal and cloud provider resources effectively, enterprises need to (1) understand
the human and technical resource capabilities that exist in the current infrastructure
and how a cloud strategy will impact the need for these or other resources; (2) define
the capabilities that a cloud provider will make available as well as constraints
on these resources, including periods of unavailability or priority of use; (3)
consider emergency situations and resource requirements necessary to determine
causes, stabilize the environment, protect sensitive and private information, and
restore service levels; (4) determine how policies, practices, and processes currently
support the use of technology; how transitioning to a cloud solution will require
policy, practice, and process changes; and the impact these changes will have
on capabilities; (5) ensure that service providers can demonstrate that personnel
understand information security requirements and are capable of discharging their
protection responsibilities; (6) ensure that internal staff has the skill and expertise
to coordinate activities with cloud providers and that they are engaged in cloud
service acquisition and ongoing management; and (7) ensure that effective channels
of communication are provided with provider management and key specialists,
particularly for problem identification and resolution.
9.4.3 Big Data and Data Analytics
Big data and data analytics allude to the way toward gathering, arranging, and
breaking down a huge measure of information to find helpful examples and learning
[19, 41] defines big data as data that cannot be handled and processed in a
straightforward manner. A big dataset won’t fit in memory unlike a spreadsheet
data that fits easily in memory. Big data is not easy to check whether it is clean.
Computations will take a long time. In big data, new data will be constantly
streaming in, and the processing system must make decisions as to which part of
the stream must be captured. The dataset may consist of images, natural language
text, and other heterogeneous data. Also, big data dataset will probably be so large
as to not fit on a single hard drive; and hence, will be stored on several different
disks across a network and will be processed on a number of cores. Queries will
have to be distributed and written to work across a network.
Also, frequent patterns generated over data streams also become large, which
means spending a lot of time mining the patterns, and thereby it can violate
one of the requirements for the data stream mining, immediate processing. In
order to solve the problem, closed frequent pattern (CFP) and maximal frequent
pattern (MFP) notations [55]. Huge information presents both enormous open
doors and huge difficulties to our general public. The open doors incorporate
better-educated business choices, more proficient store network administration and
asset assignment, more compelling focusing of items and notices, and speedier
turnaround of logical revelations [38]. IoT gadgets and machines with installed
sensors and actuators produce a colossal measure of information to be handled
by business insight and examination apparatuses for basic leadership. Various
examinations concentrate on utilizing or creating compelling techniques to change
over the information produced or caught by the IoT into learning helpful for basic
leadership and critical thinking [8, 61]. Imaginative IoT applications are utilizing
consistent extensive scale detecting, information investigation, data portrayal, and
distributed computing [24].
Information created by the various accomplices’ machines and gadgets are
nourished into a cloud data center and converged into a production network-
wide database for reproduction, information investigation, and advancement. Enor-
mous information and information investigation applications improve the prescient
upkeep of the Armada, request gauge, conveyance lead time, and client administra-
tions. The enormous information produced by IoT has diverse attributes contrasted
and general huge information due to the distinctive sorts of information gathered, of
which the most traditional qualities incorporate heterogeneity, assortment, unstruc-
tured element clamor, and high repetition [13].
9.5 IoT Solutions for Streamlining the Supply Chain

Activities
The IoT makes enormous open doors for the economy and people. The IoT has no
limits and will affect each business and individual. With new gadgets associating
into organization’s frameworks, new kinds of information will be open. No less
than three of the real advantages are correspondence, control, and cost investment
funds which prompt changed business forms, enhanced client maintenance, new
plans of action, and an expansion in the personal satisfaction. An investigation done
by McKinsey Global Institute (2015) predicts that the IoT has a potential monetary
effect of $3.9 trillion to $11.1 trillion every year in 2025 – the estimation of this
effect would be proportionate to roughly 11% of the world economy in 2025.
As the Internet of Things (IoT) opens up new business openings, firms are
attempting to comprehend the effects of the IoT transformation on their inventory
network. Regardless of the enormous enthusiasm by network administrators to use
the IoT, there is yet a lack of arrangements with the innovative part of the inventory
network.
9.6 Challenges in IoT Development on Cloud Platform for

Smart Supply Chain
Cloud computing represents an evolution in how enterprises acquire and use tech-
nology from external cloud service providers and interact with and support internal
and external users and customers. Because of its evolutionary nature, clear guidance
is needed and a direction for executive management or those responsible for
determining as to how the cloud will be used and how it fits within the organizational
structure and processes. Further evolution will let to better understanding, bringing
more specific guidance addressing the legal, operational, and technical types of risk.
Such guidance will help reduce the need to plan for building trust to achieve value
and benefit at each step in the acquisition and integration of cloud solutions.
Similarly, as with any troublesome advancement, the IoT exhibits different
difficulties for firms. This segment recognizes and talks about difficulties in IoT
application advancement for shrewd inventory network. For instance, Gubbi et al.
[24] propose that because of the blast of the information created by IoT machines,
server farms will confront challenges in security, nature of administration, informa-
tion investigation, stockpiling administration, server innovations, and server farm
organizing. Khan et al. [34] recognize challenges from specialized points of view:
naming and personality administration, interoperability and institutionalization, data
protection, objects wellbeing and security, information privacy and encryption,
organize security, range, and greening of IoT. Many investigations transcendently
call attention to the security test of the IoT [18, 32, 57]. This segment talks about five
specialized and administrative difficulties: information quality, information security,
speed of innovative change, store network process upgrade, and venture avocation
[40]. The talk concentrates on how these difficulties may have impacts on the
advancement and reception of production network IoT applications.
9.6.1 Data Quality
Information quality is characterized by the estimation of information created

and gathered by IoT objects. Information quality is essential to pick up client
engagement and acknowledgment of the IoT worldview and administrations [33].
On the off chance that information is of low quality, confidence in the choice in light
of the information will be low, and the reception of IoT advances can be blocked. At
the point, when information gathering cost is high and the nature of the information
is low, the estimation of the IoT diminishes quickly. In different circumstances,
the information required for basic leadership is not accessible or not convenient.
On the off chance that accomplices do not give opportune information on the sum
and timing of a buy, providers would not have the capacity to build up a powerful
generation design [12]. For the observing and control IoT applications, information
quality is basic to the estimation of and trust in the IoT. For firms embracing the
IoT applications for their inventory network, machines may not work appropriately,
information gathered may not be dependable, and basic choices might be made
by clients or machines in light of erroneous information. Production network
accomplices must see information from different firms to be precise, current, and
solid with a specific end goal to encourage data sharing and joint effort [52].
Directors would not utilize enormous information and information examination IoT
applications in the event that they do not have a trust in the information quality and
might not have any desire to impart their information to their accomplices.
9.6.2 Data Security
As IoT is based on the Internet, security issues of the Internet will likewise happen
in IoT [32]. Once the IoT information is spilled or hindered in any piece of the
IoT framework, the security of the whole IoT framework will be under threat.
As the quantity of associated gadgets builds up, the quantity of the conclusion
to end association focuses increments exponentially, and the quantity of potential
security gaps increments in extent. Securing the IoT is an unpredictable and
troublesome assignment. The number of assault vectors accessible to pernicious
assailants may end up plainly amazing, as a worldwide network (“get to anybody”)
and openness (“get to in any case, whenever”) are key principles of the IoT [57].
These security openings to singular observing and control IoT applications open
the entryways for security breaks, for example, dissent of-benefit (DOS) assaults
and Trojan steed assaults from programmers and other digital hoodlums. For store
network cooperation, the information gathered from the IoT applications should be
safely ensured to keep the privacy of inventory network accomplices’ information.
A current report by HP uncovers that 70% of the most regularly utilized IoT
gadgets contain genuine vulnerabilities with secret word and the client have to
get authorizations for it [28]. Filtering of ten most famous IoT gadgets uncovers,
by and large, every gadget contained 25 powerless gaps or dangers of trading off
the IoT security. The IoT gadgets normally do not utilize information encryption
procedures. Feeble security will jeopardize the client protection from the reception
of huge information and information examination of IoT applications for brilliant
store network. Security test might be reduced via preparing application designers
to join security arrangements, for example, interruption anticipation frameworks,
encryptions, and firewalls into items, and urging clients to use the IoT security
including those that are consolidated into their gadgets.
9.6.3 Velocity of Technological Change
The speed of mechanical change alludes to the rate of innovative change in the
IoT. Development is quickening at a breathtaking rate in numerous IoT innovation
wildernesses. The union of advancements in objects, systems, information stock-
piling, and applications are encouraging the speed of the IoT development. The
expansion in the speed of the innovative change prompts a more prominent level of
natural vulnerability [6, 25]. The quick mechanical improvement in the IoT is fixing
to the estimation of the market of $7.1 trillion by 2020, up from $1.9 trillion of every
2013, as the development of market request drives the innovative advances in the
IoT. Remote sensor systems (WSNs) have been perceived as a promising innovation
for the IoT, and mechanical advances in equipment have made hearty and practical
gadgets in detecting applications [58]. Brilliant store network is being produced with
propels in sensor advances and scaled down installed computational gadgets. Since
innovative changes cannot be managed by an individual firm, firms need to fabricate
a nearby business relationship to mutually grow new advancements and items [47].
Mendelson and Pillai [46] demonstrate that as the business condition turns out to be
more questionable, firms need to refresh and overhaul existing inventory network
through coordinated effort methodology all the more regularly. While different joint
effort IoT applications increment the general store network efficiency, it will be
harder to anticipate which IoT innovation will turn into a troublesome development
in production network administration. The topic of what firms ought, to limit the
danger of removal expedited by the IoT’s problematic advancement stays to be
replied.
9.6.4 Supply Chain Process Redesign
The IoT is an empowering influence of store network process update and in addition
a problematic advancement. In the meantime, this new advancement brought out
new difficulties for the outline of progressively more intricate supply chains.
Changing shopper practices and the rise of transformative advances, for example,
the Industry 4.0, counterfeit consciousness, huge information examination, and
the Internet of Things, are driving a progression of developments with significant
ramifications for the endeavors in their plan of supply chains [27]. While the
utilization of the IoT in-store network is required to enhance responsibility in
associations, it is indistinct how such desires will really be met in light of the fact
that new advances address as well as create new responsibility requests and directors
may encounter challenges in fulfilling these accountabilities [9].
Supply chain process overhaul endeavors mean to enhance arrange satisfaction,
stock administration, warehousing, conveyance administration, and client relation-
ship administration. Inventory network IoT’s potential esteems talked about in the
calculated structure can be completely acknowledged by coordinating it with store
network process overhaul. Devaraj and Kohli [15] find that IT capital venture
joined with business process reengineering enhanced gainfulness in the social
insurance industry. While checking and control IoT applications may effectively
meet operational proficiency, they may at present be ineffectively coordinated with
joint effort concentrated production network procedures, for example, anticipating
and arrange satisfaction. Subsequently, firms may make storehouses of checking
and control IoT applications without completely understanding the advantages
of community IoT applications. New supply process overhaul may require work
investigation, work disposals, work creation, and employment preparation because
of the end of existing procedure exercises and production of new process exercises.
A change administration program for influenced inventory network experts should
be set up before the selection of the IoT.
9.6.5 Investment Justification
While the IoT is generally new, speculation openings flourish alongside the
advances of different IoT innovations. Imaginative firms are relied upon to use
different capacities of the IoT advances. While actualizing an IoT domain requires
enormous speculations. The venture choice where things are not open and inter-
operable makes it troublesome for organizations to embrace this innovation [1].
To understand the potential advantages, firms require a fitting measure with a
specific end goal to legitimately survey the dangers and prizes of the innovation
[41]. Numerous IoT ventures have vague issue definitions and are utilizing rising
advances, along these lines, causing a higher danger of task disappointment and
higher irreversibility of speculations than customary innovation ventures. When
all that is said is done, interests in huge information and information examination
IoT applications are more unpredictable and less secure than interests in the other
two IoT application classifications. The standard measure firms commonly use to
esteem ventures, net present value (NPV) and return on investment (ROI), frequently
may not catch genuine estimation of the IoT extension because of the way these
standard measures disregard adaptability in speculation, for example, reversibility
and versatility in the assessment time frame. NPV tends to dismiss a venture’s
worth when there is the high vulnerability of undertaking achievement and is not
reasonable for high hazard ventures, for example, ventures for huge information
and information investigation. So as to esteem high hazard IoT ventures, the genuine
choice approach might be more proper [41].
The benefits of cloud acquisition based on a full understanding of the cost of
cloud compared with other technology platform business solutions are evaluated.
The full cost of provisioning technology infrastructures and services is much larger
than the cost of facilities, hardware, and software and the annual cost of human
resources. The full cost of acquiring, deploying, and maintaining cloud infras-
tructures, platforms, or software services is more than what is represented within
the cloud contract and SLA. Enterprises must also make a substantial investment
in the governing structures, processes and procedures, enterprise architectures,

and culture required to make technology and applications an essential element
in how the business is managed and how internal and external value is assured.
Investments must be made in people and their skills and in professional certifications
that demonstrate their competencies. The true cost of cloud computing needs to
be measured against the total investment and ongoing costs of providing similar
services using internal resources. The investment in people, process, and technology
creates a value structure that may not be easily replicated within the context of
a cloud service strategy. To properly evaluate the costs and benefits of cloud
computing, enterprises need to (1) clearly, document expected benefits in terms of
rapid resource provisioning, scalability, capacity, continuity, and the cost reductions
that the cloud services offer; (2) define the true life cycle cost of IT services
provided internally or through a provider to have a basis for comparing expected and
received value; (3) balance cost with functionality, resilience, resource utilization,
and business value; (4) look beyond cost savings by considering the full benefits
and value of what cloud services and support can provide; (5) periodically evaluate
performance against expectations.
9.7 Conclusion
Because the IoT is such a recent development, there remains a paucity of studies on
the supply chain aspects of the IoT. This makes it very challenging for enterprises
to make informed decisions in regard to IoT adoption/implementation. Many enter-
prises invest in a variety of IoT applications for their supply chain innovation. The
IoT became a reality beyond the hype. However, converting the IoT investment into
real performance and profit improvement is challenging. Our chapter contributes
to the literature in this emerging field by presenting a foundational knowledge for
building a smart supply chain.
This chapter presented a conceptual framework of the Internet of Things (IoT)
for smart supply chain management and identified three capabilities of the IoT:
monitoring and control, information sharing and collaboration, and big data and
data analytics. This chapter also examined how the IoT applications support the
supply chain management of Fortune 200 companies. This chapter presents core
and emerging IoT technologies and technology platforms for a smart supply
chain. Finally, this chapter discussed five technical and managerial challenges in
implementing IoT applications for smart supply chain: data quality, data security,
the velocity of technological change, supply chain process redesign, and investment
justification.
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Chapter 10
A Conceptual Framework for Security
and Privacy in Edge Computing
Bragadeesh S. A. and Umamakeswari Arumugam
10.1 Introduction
Ubiquitous connectivity is the need of the hour with the ever-increasing volume of
devices getting access to the Internet. Several key technologies drive the prolifera-
tion of IoT solutions across multifaceted application domains that are extensively
discussed, researched, and adopted. The key challenge in IoT is processing the data
from devices and performing meaningful interpretation to derive insights and take
decisions.
Cloud computing has made possible the widespread adoption and proliferation
of IoT. It has been the backbone of IoT deployments and applications which has
helped in achieving primary network objectives like storage, communication, and
computation. It also offers services that can be tailored according to user and
application requirements. Cloud computing consists of a pool of resources, typically
consisting of services like networking, storage, and computing, which are organized
to cater the needs of multiple end users based on a multitenant model. The access
to these resources is via standard mechanisms and is usually available across a
network. The varieties of service offered by the cloud computing paradigm include
SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) in which applications are offered as service, IaaS
(Infrastructure-as-a-Service) which offers computing resources as a service, and
finally PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) which provides software and hardware tools for
development. The widely adopted deployment models of cloud computing include
public and private clouds in which organizations deploy cloud services to any end
user or within their own cloud computing platform, respectively. Cloud computing
is capable of providing the following value additions – elasticity, ubiquity, reduced
Bragadeesh S. A. () · U. Arumugam

School of Computing, SASTRA Deemed to be University, Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, India

172 Bragadeesh S. A. and U. Arumugam
management effort, pay-as-you-use, and convenience which has been a driving force
for the creation of a rapidly growing industry across the globe which has its worth
in billions [9].
Regardless of all these benefits, there are few areas in which cloud computing
does fall short of meeting the application requirements, which include increased
network latency, jitter, lack of ability to access local contextual information, and
lack of support for mobility of users. For an application that is delay sensitive,
these requirements must be met. Due to these reasons, there has been an evolution
of new computing paradigms such as fog computing, mobile cloud computing,
and mobile edge computing, among others [2, 7]. Edge computing leverages the
resources available on the local edge to meet the specific application requirements
mentioned. Edge computing can bring the services offered by cloud computing to
the network edge and the essential functionalities like communication, storage, and
computation closer to the devices and users.
The primary objective of these computing technologies is to bring about the capa-
bilities of cloud computing closer to the user or near the network edge. Normally
most edge computing paradigms follow the structure as shown in Fig. 10.1. The
edge layer devices as specified can be microdata centers, gateways, and dedicated
Cloud Layer
Cloud Infrastructure
Edge Layer
Micro Datacenters Gateways Switches/Routers
Device Layer
Users Smart Phones Cameras Data
Fig. 10.1 Edge computing model

10 A Conceptual Framework for Security and Privacy in Edge Computing 173
Mobile Edge Computing

Focus is on Mobile network operators as
infrastructure providers
Mobile Cloud Computing

Edge Computing
Paradigms Focus is on User owned data centres - Cloudlets
Fog Computing
Intermediate layer of computing, storage and networking

services between devices and cloud
Fig. 10.2 Edge computing technology paradigms
routers/switches. Microdata centers are capable of functioning autonomously and

collaborate with other such devices to offer services to end users, to third-party
clients, and sometimes to the infrastructure providers too. They are still connected
to the traditional cloud infrastructure which creates an opportunity to establish a
hierarchical architecture to provide platforms for the management and registration
of user services. An edge infrastructure which is owned by a single service provider
referred to as trust domain can collaborate with other such trust domains, forming
an environment where it is possible to serve multitude end users.
Figure 10.2 is helpful in pointing out the key functional differences in the differ-
ent edge paradigms. A detailed comparison between the various edge paradigms is
available in Sect. 10.2. There are several similarities among them. The architectures,
services, mechanisms, and protocols applicable for one of them are applicable and
can be adopted for the other.
The security and privacy mechanisms for edge computing paradigms are still
in its emerging stage, and given the growing importance of the field, it is critical
to identify the possible threats. It may not be possible to reciprocate the currently
available tools and methods for security and privacy in cloud computing for edge
computing owing to its specific attributes such as heterogeneity, low latency, loca-
tion awareness, spatial distribution, and mobility. Even though some of these issues
can be addressed using existing security schemes, new issues arise due to the above-
mentioned special characteristics of edge computing. It might be even possible to
adopt and analyze the existing security and privacy mechanisms that are imple-
mented for other enabling technologies and related computing paradigms. Some
of the enabling technologies which play a significant role in realization of edge
computing include virtualization technologies, wireless networks, peer-to-peer and

distributed networks, and software-defined networking (SDN), among others [1, 2].
The rest of the content is organized as follows. Section 10.2 elucidates the
similarities and differences between the various edge computing paradigms. Section
10.3 introduces the basic components of security and privacy for edge computing
and summarizes the various threats that target the edge paradigm. Section 10.4
presents a framework for implementing security and privacy for edge paradigm.
Section 10.5 highlights the various challenges involved in implementation of
security and privacy solutions. Section 10.6 provides the concluding remarks and
briefly talks about the future directions. It is our belief that this paper provides better
clarity for researchers and users regarding the concepts of edge computing and tries
to stress the importance of ensuring the security and privacy as a key requirement
for application and system developers.
10.2 Similarities and Differences Between Edge Paradigms
Table 10.1 gives an overall idea of how the edge paradigms differ from the tradi-
tional cloud structure. This comparison is necessary to understand the challenges
that arise when we need to implement solutions in edge computing. It is evident that
all the edge paradigms have the common goal of bringing the capabilities of cloud
computing closer to the edge. They all provide in some way the multitenant vir-
tualization infrastructure which helps in location-specific provisioning capabilities
and access to nearby computational resources when required. We have taken into
account MEC, MCC, and fog computing for our comparison [1, 5]. As mentioned
earlier all of them have own similarities among them and uniqueness as well. They
Table 10.1 Differences between edge computing and cloud computing

Features Cloud computing Edge computing
Computational capacity High Medium to low
Size and operating mode Centralized large servers Distributed smaller servers
Applications Delay tolerant, Low latency, real-time
computationally intensive operation, high QoS
Fronthaul/backhaul High Low
communication overhead
Mobility support Low High
Management Service provider Local business
Deployment Requires complicated Ad hoc deployment/minimal
deployment planning or no planning
User device Computers, limited mobile Mobile smart wearable
devices devices
Network access type WAN LAN/WLAN
Fig. 10.3 Similarities and

differences between edge • Support for User Mobility
paradigms • Network Architecture
Similarities
• Decentralized and distributed Behavior
• Federated Infrastructures
• Monitoring and control operations

performed by infrastructure providers
Differences • Deployment and management of data
centres and related applications
• Specific services
provide a similar set of benefits that are majorly due to the closeness of the edge
data centers. The benefits are as follows:
• Low and predictable jitter and network latency
• Location-based context-aware information
• Support for scalability
• High availability of services
Figure 10.3 summarizes the similarities and differences between the edge
paradigms. The predominant similarity is that all these techniques basically can
provide support for mobility. They have consideration for device mobility and
have specific management mechanisms that are located at the application level
itself or use virtual instances of devices to accommodate for the same. The next
similarity is the overall architecture which has support to enable the edge paradigms
to behave as an extension of cloud infrastructure. The network elements act in
a distributed and decentralized way capable of provisioning services and taking
decisions autonomously. They can also cooperate with each other to reduce the
dependency on the central cloud setup. The different edge data centers can exchange
information among them and coexist to form a federated infrastructure.
Moving on to the differences, even though the edge paradigms have a common
objective, they have few basic differences in the way they fulfill the objective. MEC
deployments primarily focus on realization of 5G, whereas fog nodes can provide
services to other applications which have their own servers, gateways, access points,
and so on. In case of MCC, it is highly distributed in nature, and device instances
can perform their own service provisioning. This difference in management and
deployment of the data centers determines who will be service providers. Another
difference is that the applications supported are determined by the choice of service
providers. MEC provides support for operators to work closely with other third-
party service providers, which enables for thorough testing and possibility for
customized integration. This applies true even for fog computing also. The final
difference is that MCC paradigm provides specific services that are not related to
virtualization but enables support for execution mechanisms that are distributed in
nature. This is highly beneficial for devices that have severe resource constraints.
Although there are differences, still the security and privacy techniques used for
one paradigm can be easily adopted for the other.
10.3 Overview of Security, Privacy, and Threats in Edge

Computing
As emphasized earlier, edge computing is not a one-to-one replacement of cloud

computing, whereas it helps in augmenting and broadening the services of cloud
computing. The principal services offered by edge computing include storage,
computation, data sharing, and networking [12]. With respect to these four services,
unique security and privacy requirements emerge as shown in Fig. 10.4.
10.3.1 Security in Edge Computing
The key attributes whenever we are trying to implement security solutions are
authentication, integrity, confidentiality, trust, access control, data security, and
privacy [1, 11]. The various components of providing end-to-end security and
privacy are as follows.
10.3.1.1 Network Security
The configurations performed by the network administrator and the network

management information must be secured and isolated from the normal data flow.
Fig. 10.4 Summary of security and privacy requirements for edge computing
This is required since the edge devices are distributed across the network and the
cost of maintenance is high. However, a new network concept called software-
defined networking (SDN) can come to the rescue. The benefits of SDN include but
not limited to reducing the burden of management and implementation, improving
the scalability of the network, decreasing the cost of maintenance, providing
prioritization and isolation of network traffic, and enhancing the access control of
network resources, cooperation, and network sharing.
10.3.1.2 Data Storage Security
Like cloud computing, the data storage in edge platform is also outsourced. It is
tough to ensure data integrity since there are a lot of possibilities for data loss and
data modifications. If the data present in one device is compromised, the attackers
could easily abuse the data stored to fulfill their own needs. Hence, provision for
data storage auditing should be done. Third-party auditing services are available,
which are provided by the infrastructure providers, and the application users should
be aware of the auditing policies. It is possible to use encryption techniques to
ensure integrity, verifiability, and confidentiality of the data to check for untrusted
network entities and allow the user to check the stored data. Since all data need
not be essentially present on all the available storage resources, reduced latency and
support for dynamic access are required.
10.3.1.3 Data Computation Security
The data computation performed at the edge servers and devices should be secured
and verifiable. The security of computations can be ensured by using data encryption
techniques, which prevents data visibility to any hackers/attackers. Since the
microdata centers have the provisions to off-load some of the computations to
other data centers, a mechanism to verify the computation results and establish trust
between the two entities becomes a necessity. The computational accuracy should
be verifiable by the user. Use of data encryption for the data that is being forwarded
to the edge data centers from end devices and from one data center to another
helps in ensuring data integrity and protection. One of the popular mechanisms to
verify the data security is using data search technique in which a keyword-based
search is performed in the encrypted data repositories. This enables users to securely
search for user data amidst encrypted data. This helps in maintaining the secrecy of
encryption.
10.3.1.4 End Devices Security
Since the end devices are typically less powerful and have limited access to the
surroundings, they can be easily tampered with. Any hacker may try to take control
of a device and make it a rogue node to retrieve essential network management data.
They can hinder the normal behavior by corrupting the device data and increase the
frequency of data access by sending fake information. They can also use the end
device to propagate false data across the network to potentially create discrepancies
and disrupt the normal network behavior. Hence, proper efforts should be made for
ensuring the security of the end device.
10.3.1.5 Access Control
Enforcement of access control mechanisms can provide dual benefits of security

and privacy. Since the edge platform is distributed and decentralized in nature,
a good access control policy acts as a defensive shield to mitigate unauthorized
device and service access. Access control helps in realizing the interoperability
and collaboration among microdata centers that are provided by different service
providers and are separated across different geo-locations. A robust access control
mechanism is required to meet the design goals, accommodate mobility, low latency,
and interoperability.
10.3.1.6 Intrusion Detection
Intrusion detection techniques help in identifying malicious data entries and detect
device anomalies. They can be used to carefully investigate and analyze the behavior
of devices in the network and provide methods to perform packet inspection,
which helps in early detection of denial-of-service attacks, integrity attacks, and
data flooding, among others. The primary challenge when implementing intrusion
detection for edge platform is to accommodate for scalability, mobility, and low-
latency requirements.
10.3.2 Privacy in Edge Computing
Privacy in edge computing can be enforced in a threefold manner: user privacy,

data privacy, and location privacy. User privacy deals with protecting the privacy
of user’s credentials and their frequency of accessing the data. A potential hacker
may observe the usage pattern and try to pretend to be legitimate user and access the
necessary information. Hence, ensuring the privacy of user is required. Data privacy-
preserving techniques may be available at the edge and cloud level, but making them
available at the resource-constrained end device is a design challenge. This helps in
avoiding unauthorized access of the network by hackers and helps in preserving the
integrity of the network.
Since the edge data centers may be spatially distributed, ensuring location privacy
is also a prime requirement. Since the location data can help in deciphering the
environment-related information, the choice of edge data centers has to be carefully

planned. Identity obfuscation is a technique used to protect the identity of an edge
device from the user even though the user is nearby. When more than one edge nodes
are being used by an application, it is relatively easier for an attacker to isolate the
location, since the proximity of edge nodes gives them an idea that the end device
should be in between the edge nodes. Ensuring location privacy without affecting
the computational overhead is of primary importance.
10.3.3 Nature of Threats in Edge Computing
Any possible attempt to disrupt the normal functioning of a network or a system is

deemed as a threat. Only when we understand the nature of threats, it is possible
to define security solutions for it. Hence, the basic knowledge about threats and
how they can be mitigated is essential. All the possible threats in edge computing
environment have been presented in Table 10.2.
Table 10.2 List of threats Components Possible threats

Data Data replication
Data manipulation
Data deletion
Illegal data access
Eavesdropping
Network Denial of service
Man-in-the-middle
Physical damage
Service manipulation
Rogue server
Privacy leakage
Jamming
Congestion
Black hole
Communication Data loss
Data breach
Sniffing
Message replay
Impersonation
Services Service manipulation
Rogue infrastructure
Privacy leakage
Insecure APIs
Devices Physical damage
Misuse of resources
Flooding
Power failure
The threats can be grouped according to the component of the system they try to
attack [6]. The implementation of solutions to these attacks can be made possible by
a combination of security attributes such as authentication, confidentiality, integrity,
availability, and privacy.
10.4 Framework for Security and Privacy in Edge

Computing
Figure 10.5 represents the basic components of the proposed conceptual framework.
The framework consists of a hierarchical structure in which the communication and
exchange of data can be done using APIs. There are three levels: device manage-
ment, security services, and application and infrastructure. The proposed framework
aims to bring into account the necessary security and privacy requirements which are
specific to edge computing platform. The framework can be implemented in an edge
Cloud Infrastructure
Device Management and Security Framework

Application and Infrastructure
Service Registration Storage Management Additional Services
Security Services
Access Control Authentication Trust Management Data Integrity
Policies Services Engine Verification
Device Management
System Data
Database Device Service
Management Orchestration
Devices, Sensors and Actuators
Fig. 10.5 Security and privacy framework for edge computing

gateway or a microdata center. The suitability of the framework for implementation

in the resource-constrained end devices needs further investigation.
10.4.1 Device Management
The primary functionalities of the device management layer are to manage the end
devices, create database, manage the services provide to the end device, and perform
data orchestration operations. The status of the end devices, access control, main-
taining integrity of the data stored, and providing the necessary data from service
providers are all taken care by the device management layer. Network function
virtualization (NFV) is one of the popular and emerging technologies which can
perform the tasks mentioned above. NFV in convergence with SDN can help in
realizing the full potential of edge computing platform. NFV provides virtualization
of infrastructure services, orchestration, and management functionalities.
10.4.2 Security Services
The security services layer is the heart of the framework which performs the
critical tasks such as creating, updating, and maintaining the access control policies.
It also ensures authentication of devices, service providers, and the data that is
communicated. It also makes use of a trust management engine which is used
for accomplishing two objectives. It governs the privacy of the overall system and
generates rules for implementing intrusion detection mechanism. The data integrity
verification component performs the verification of data across the system and
computations done by other edge devices. Establishment of well-defined APIs and
integration of the modules with the application and device management layer help
in improving the overall performance of the framework and achieving the edge
computing specific requirements.
10.4.3 Application and Infrastructure
This layer is responsible for keeping track of the network-wide application interac-
tions and governs the authentication policies for accessing the network devices. The
service provisioning details of neighboring data centers and making the decision
of whether cloud support is required or not are carried out by this layer. Also, the
services offered by the infrastructure providers are monitored and provisioned for
access to the end devices. This layer is significant because edge platform caters to
multitenant application services, hence implementing security measures for it is an
essential task.
10.5 Security and Privacy Challenges in Edge Computing
Edge computing has opened new arenas and created new opportunities to build
solutions that can augment existing cloud-based solutions. In order to explore the
full potential and bring about the widespread adoption of edge computing solutions,
one key area of focus is how to secure the system components and how to ensure the
privacy of user and organization data [6]. Figure 10.6 points out some of the major
challenges that need to be addressed [3, 4, 8, 10]. The challenges can be summarized
as below.
• The added security mechanism should not increase the computation overhead
and hamper the storage space required for other system operations.
• Edge computing mechanisms use cache management techniques which are prone
to side channel attacks; hence, care should be taken to prevent leakage of private
and sensitive data.
• For applications that stream data continuously for monitoring and management
purposes, hence due to increased number of devices, the volume data to be
processed is typically large. To detect the anomaly, packet filtering mechanisms
need to be implemented which might require additional memory and processing
power.
• It is difficult to manage user identity, scalability, monitoring, performance, data
security, and considering threats from insiders due to the large number of users
who share the resources and application in the edge computing environment.
Fig. 10.6 Security and privacy challenges in edge computing

• The trade-off between application performance and security is solely dependent

on the user or application’s requirements; hence, establishing clear performance
benchmarks without compromising security is important.
• Depending on the application and user requirements, the edge platform may have
high data throughput and relatively lesser amount of data stored which may lead
to problems for data storage and recovery.
• By using virtualization services, edge computing provides multitenant applica-
tion access leads to exposing APIs to multiple users which may lead to insider
attacks and data breaches.
• Due to the increased number of devices, implementing a common access control
policy becomes a tedious task. Accounting for mobility of devices is also
important.
• To ensure the privacy of user’s data, the data privacy policies of the edge platform
as well as the cloud infrastructure must be in sync which might lead to potential
challenges. The privacy policies of different infrastructure providers may not be
the same.
10.6 Conclusion
In this work, we have defined the various edge paradigms and listed out their
similarities and differences. We have also made a comparison of edge computing
with cloud computing to drive in the importance of new implementation challenges
and approaches required for edge computing solutions. We have analyzed the
various aspects of security and privacy for edge computing and also brought into
light some of the possible threats. A conceptual framework for ensuring security
and privacy in edge computing has been discussed along with various components
involved in it. The reality to be considered here is that security and privacy solutions
for edge computing are still in their nascent stages, and, hence, we have analyzed
the possible challenges that might arise. This work is intended to be an eye-opener
for developers and technology enthusiasts who are involved in developing security
and privacy solutions for edge computing.
The future scope of this work is to develop a system which consists of a
knowledge base, rule-based inference engines, and a decision support toolbox that
could be added to an edge computing platform which helps in mitigating possible
security attacks and ensures the privacy of user data.
Acknowledgment The authors wish to express their sincere thanks to the Department of Science
& Technology, New Delhi, India (Project ID: SR/FST/ETI-371/2014), and express their sincere
thanks to the INSPIRE fellowship (DST/INSPIRE Fellowship/2016/IF160837) for their financial
support. The authors also thank SASTRA Deemed to be University, Thanjavur, India, for extending
the infrastructural support to carry out this work.
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Index
A C
Africa, mist computing challenges Cloud-based radio access network (CRAN),
assimilation and domestication, 125 33, 37
business blueprint, 126 Cloud computing
drivers supporting growth, 126–127 deployment clouds, 52
failure, faults and risk, 125–126 vs. edge computing, 176–178
funding opportunities, 126 mist and dew computing, 111
inclusiveness and governance, 125 service models, 52–53
skills gap and digital divide, 124–125 supply chain management
technical recommendations, 128–129 data quality, 164
technology transfer, 125 data security, 164–165
investment justification, 166–167
redesign process, 165–166
B technological change velocity, 165
Big data Cloud provider
IoT applications, 161–162 cloud service brokers, 11
mist and dew computing, 111 future improvement, 12
in smart cities, SDN, 92–93 Internet of Things
Bioacoustic sensor, 135–138 black box syndrome, 10
Blockchain technology, 115, 121, 123 communication models, 9
Bowel activity monitoring interconnectivity, 10
battery charger circuit, 137 notebook PC vs. tablet, 11
bioacoustic sensor, 135–137 privacy considerations and legal issues,
bowel sounds, 135 10
electronic stethoscopes, 134 smart objects, 9
high-pass filter and normalization, 139 volume, 9–10
intestinal activity detection, 141–142 pattern prediction technique, 8
intestinal sounds, 135 resource allocation
IoT-driven sensor device, 136 Amazon’s charging models, 3
LMS algorithm, 134 instance type, 4
operational amplifier circuit, 138 power consumption, 6–7
power spectrogram, 142 revenue, 5
regulator circuit scheme, 137 Cloud service brokers (CSBs), 11
signal processing steps, 137–141 Communications service providers (CSPs), 35

Communication and Computing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99061-3
186 Index
Community cloud, 52 architecture, 116

Convolutional neural networks (CNNs), 43 characterstics, 117
Council of Supply Chain Management cloudlets, 114
Professionals (CSCMP), 148 fog computing, 112–113
microdata centre, 114
mobile edge computing, 113
D M2M, 115
Data reduction techniques mobile edge computing, 57–59
comparsion, 65 nature of threats, 181–182
compression, 62 optimized resource allocation, 24–26
data aggregation, 62–63 privacy mechanisms, 180–181
data handling solutions, 61 pull from IoT, 56
data mining and machine learning, 63 push from cloud services, 55–56
data pre-processing, 63 QoS requirements, 54
data redundancy, 63 security mechanisms
data sampling, 61–62 access control, 180
FlexAnalytics, 61 data computation, 179
network theory, 63 data storage, 179
perceptually important points, 61 end devices, 179–180
Deep learning, MEC intrusion detection, 180
automatic detection process, 43–45 network security, 178–179
base station routers, 44 services layer, 183
machine learning techniques, 44 technology paradigms, 174, 175
mobile sensing, 43 time sensitivity, 18
security threats, 45 European Telecommunications Standards
Deep neural networks (DNNs), 43 Institute (ETSI), 34
Domain name system (DNS), 39 Everything-as-a-Service (EaaS), 52
Dynamic voltage and frequency scaling
(DVFS), 6
G
Gastrointestinal track motility monitor
E (GTMM), 134
Edge application, 20–21 Generative adversarial networks (GANs),
Edge communication, 19–20 43
Edge computing, 17–19 Google Cloud Platform (GCP), 79
application and infrastructure, 183
challenges and solutions
data abstraction, 65 H
naming system, 65 Hardware-as-a-Service (HaaS), 52
privacy and security, 66, 184–185 Hybrid cloud, 52
programmability, 64
service management, 66
cloud hierarchy, 19 I
cloudlet, 57 Industry Specifications Group (ISG), 34
communication network, 26–30 Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), 52
concept, 55 Internet of Things (IoT), 2, 53
data consumer to producer, 56 biosensors, 85
device management, 183 cloud platform, SCM
fog computing, 59–60 data quality, 164
integer linear programming formulation, data security, 164–165
22–24 investment justification, 166–167
IoT-cloud infrastructure, 18 redesign process, 165–166
IoT technologies, 73 technological change velocity, 165
mist and dew computing, 117, 118 connected cars, 79
Index 187
construction industry, 81–82 failure, faults and risk, 125–126

data processing layer stack, 73 funding opportunities, 126
driven sensor device, 136 inclusiveness and governance, 125
energy management, 83 skills gap and digital divide, 124–125
environmental monitoring, 84 technical recommendations, 128–129
healthcare systems, 85–86 technology transfer, 125
Industrial IoT, 72, 75–76 comparsion, 119
infrastructure management, 74 and dew computing
mist and dew computing, 109–111 big data, 111
peer-to-peer networking, 73 blockchain technology, 115
poultry farming, 87 cloud computing, 111
precision agriculture, 86–87 edge computing, 112–114
self-parking vehicles, 79–80 fluid computing, 114
smart cities, 81 Google search trend, 109
smart homes, 82 IoT technology, 109–111
smart panels, 82–83 Industry 4.0
smart retail, 76–77 accurate predictions and better
smart supply chain, 77–78 decisions, 124
smart surveillance, 87 blockchain technology, 123
smart wearables, 84 cost reduction, 123–124
smoke detectors, 80–81 cross-continental operations, 122
supply chain management direct and impactful value creation,
big data and data analytics, 161–162 124
cost reduction, 154 MindSphere, 123
data sharing and collaboration, predictive maintenance, 123
159–161 secure, safer and sustainable operation,
innovation stage, 156 124
logistics, 155 uptime improvement and availability,
monitoring and control, 158–159 124
network architecture, 157 smart cities, 119–120
open advancement, 157 Mobile edge computing (MEC), 34
optimal distribution network, 154 applications, 39–41
RFID labels, 153, 154 architecture, 36, 37
streamline solutions, 162–163 challenges, 41–42
Things as a Service, 158 cloud-RAN, 37
technology roadmap, 72 communications service providers, 35
transportation and logistics, 78 deep learning
automatic detection process, 43–45
base station routers, 44
L machine learning techniques, 44
Low-power wide area network (LPWAN) mobile sensing, 43
controls, 64 security threats, 45
domain name system, 39
edge computing, 57–59
M ETSI, 34
Machine-to-machine communication (M2M), framework, 36–39
54, 115 ISG, 34
Microdata centre (MDC), 114 mobile edge orchestrator, 38
Mist computing radio access network, 36
blockchain technology, 121 radio applications cloud servers, 34
challenges in Africa
assimilation and domestication, 125
business blueprint, 126 N
drivers supporting growth, 126–127 Named data network (NDN), 101
188 Index
P computational methods, 96
Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), 52 data collection and intermediate levels,
Private cloud, 52 95–96
Proposed system architecture, SDIoT, 93–94 data management and processing level,
application level, 100–101 96–97
computational methods, 96 HDFS system, 100
data collection and intermediate levels, message queue, 97–100
95–96 named data network, 101
data management and processing level, threshold limit lalue, 97
96–97 simulation results, 101–104
HDFS system, 100 Spark and GraphX, 101
message queue, 97–100 Supply chain management
named data network, 101 adaptability technique, 152
threshold limit lalue, 97 bolster exercises, 150
Public cloud, 52 cloud platform, IoT
data quality, 164
data security, 164–165
R investment justification, 166–167
Radio access network (RAN), 36 redesign process, 165–166
Radio applications cloud servers (RACS), 34 technological change velocity, 165
Radio network controller (RNC), 36 cost methodology, 152
Recurrent neural networks (RNNs), 43 CSCMP, 148
RedEdge model, 64 integrated value-added, 149–150
inventory network, 148
IoT applications
S big data and data analytics, 161–162
SDIoT, proposed system architecture, 93–94 cost reduction, 154
application level, 100–101 data sharing and collaboration, 159–161
computational methods, 96 innovation stage, 156
data collection and intermediate levels, logistics, 155
95–96 monitoring and control, 158–159
data management and processing level, network architecture, 157
96–97 open advancement, 157
HDFS system, 100 optimal distribution network, 154
message queue, 97–100 RFID labels, 153, 154
named data network, 101 streamline solutions, 162–163
threshold limit lalue, 97 Things as a Service, 158
Security-as-a-Service (SaaS), 52 leveraging effect, 151
Security mechanisms production network administration, 148
access control, 180 quality procedure, 152
data computation, 179 SCOR model, 149
data storage, 179 time system, 152
end devices, 179–180
intrusion detection, 180
network security, 178–179 T
Software-defined networking (SDN) Time division multiple access (TDMA), 37
big data in smart cities, 92–93
implementation and analysis, 101–104
proposed system architecture, SDIoT, W
93–94 Wireless medical sensor networks (WMSNs),
application level, 100–101 133

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EAI/Springer Innovations in Communication and Computing

Fadi Al-Turjman Editor

EAI is a grassroots member organization initiated through cooperation between

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/15427

ISSN 2522-8595 ISSN 2522-8609 (electronic)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018958621

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

Antalya, Turkey Fadi Al-Turjman

9 Application of Cloud Computing and Internet of Things

Mohamed Abu Sharkh, Abdallah Shami, and Mohamad Kalil

Depending on Cloud technologies for core business activities like collaboration,

M. Abu Sharkh ()

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 1

1.2 Resource Allocation in the Cloud: Personal vs. Corporate

1.2.1 X Requests vs. One Really Large One

1.2.2 Energy Efficiency Ramifications

Personal Cloud Demand Prediction

Request Sources Request Application type Request Volume

Client Effects on Resource

Pricing policies Energy Efficiency policies High availability policies

Fig. 1.4 Personal Cloud demand prediction

1.3 Request Pattern Prediction

As previously discussed, demand prediction gains elevated criticality in the case of

1.4 Internet of Things: The Undiscriminating Swarm

1.4.1 IoT and Personal Cloud: How Personal Things

1.4.2 Inherent IoT Issues in the Era of Personal Cloud

The number of interconnections between things and connections to the Cloud is

1.4.2.3 The Black Box Syndrome

“Researchers at the French technology institute Eurecom downloaded some 32,000

1.4.2.4 Privacy Considerations and Legal Issues

1.4.3 The Cloud-Friendly Device Market as a Driver

1.5 Cloud Brokering Services

Another challenge Cloud providers need to be aware of is the general trend of

1.6 Conclusions and Avenues for Future Improvement

19. B. Darrow, is-live-migration-coming-to-amazon-web-services-smart-money-says-yes/.

Jitender Grover and Ram Murthy Garimella

2.1.1 Edge Computing

Distributed computing paradigms like Cluster Computing and Grid Computing

J. Grover () · R. M. Garimella

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 17

Fig. 2.1 IoT-Cloud infrastructure

Fig. 2.2 Time sensitivity in real-time vs non-real-time systems

Edge Computing potentially addresses issues like latency concerns, limited

Fig. 2.3 Cloud hierarchy

2.1.2 Edge Communication

It is most likely that the edge wireless network is based on micro/pico/femto

Fig. 2.4 Multi-tier

2.1.3 Edge Application

• Upgradability of computing/communication, control resources on demand.

2.2 Related Work

2.3 Edge Computing Architecture: Integer Linear

aij = 1; if Type A computer is placed at (i, j)

bij = 1; if Type B computer is placed at (i, j)

subject to the linear constraints

2.4 Optimized Resource Allocation at Edge

Resources loT Nodes

Maximum Allowed Requests

Fig. 2.5 Resource allocation problem

As shown in Fig. 2.5:

• Set nM = L and ni = 0 for i = M. Thus, L is the maximum attainable value