Resource Allocation and Task Offloading in Blockchain-Enabled Fog Computing Networks

Future Internet of Things (IoT) will be a connected network of sensors enabling applications such as industrial automation and autonomous driving. To manage such a large number of applications, efficient computing techniques using fog nodes will be required. A major challenge in such IoT networks is to manage the resource allocation of fog computing nodes considering security and system efficiency. A secure selection of fog nodes will be needed for forwarding the tasks without interception by the eavesdropper and minimizing the task delay. However, challenges such as the secure selection of fog nodes for forwarding the tasks without interception by the eavesdropper and minimizing the task delay are critical in IoT-based fog computing. In this paper, an efficient technique is proposed that solves the formulated problem of allocation of the tasks to the fog node resources using a stable matching algorithm. The proposed technique develops preference profiles for both IoT and fog nodes based on factors such as delay and secrecy rate. Finally, Gale–Shapley matching is used for task offloading. Detailed simulation results show that the performance of the proposed technique is significantly higher than the recent techniques in the literature.

Future Internet of Things (IoT) networks enabled with fog computing is promising to achieve lower processing delay and lighter link burden, by effectively offloading the computing tasks of the terminal nodes (TNs) to nearby fog nodes (FNs) at the network edge. Existing researches for the energy consumption in fog-enabled networks mostly focused on the minimization of the overall energy consumed by the task offloading services. However, fair offloading among multiple FNs while maintaining a satisfactory energy efficiency is of great significance for the sustainability of the fog-enabled IoT networks, especially in the scenarios with battery-powered FNs. In this paper, we propose a fair and energy-minimized task offloading (FEMTO) algorithm based on a fairness scheduling metric, taking three important characteristics into consideration, which include the task offloading energy consumption, the FN's historical average energy and the FN priority. The analytical results of the optimal target FN, the optimal TN transmission power, and the optimal subtask size are obtained in a fair and energy-minimized manner. Extensive simulations are carried out for the heterogeneous fog-enabled IoT network, and the numerical results indicate that the proposed FEMTO algorithm effectively determines the FN feasibility and the minimum energy consumption for the task offloading services. Moreover, a high and robust fairness level for the FNs' energy consumptions is obtained by the proposed FEMTO algorithm.

With the continuous evolution of technology, the prevalence of the Internet of Things (IoT) has grown significantly. However, with this rise comesa number of challenges for integrated Cloud Computing (CC), including security, performance, latency, and network issues. Fortunately, Fog Computing is a solution that addresses these concerns by bringing CC closer to IoT devices. Essentially, fog serves as a data hub that processes and stores information locally on the fog node, rather than sending it to a cloud server. This results in faster response times and higher- quality services compared to those offered by traditional cloud servers. Fog Computing can optimize service delivery for multiple IoT clients by allowing the administrationof services and resource provisioning outside of CC, nearer to devices, or at specific locations for Service Level Agreements (SLAs). It's important to note that Fog Computing is not intended to replace CC, but rather to complement itas a critical component. In this paper, we explore various computing paradigms, examine the features and architecture of Fog Computing, analyze its relationship with IoT, and assess differentalgorithms used in Fog Computing systems. Furthermore, we tackle the distinctive challenges that emerge with Fog Computing as an intermediate layer between IoT sensors/devices and data centers. Keywords: Fog Computing, Internet of Things(IOT), Cloud Computing (CC).

With the rapid development and convergence of the mobile Internet and the Internet of Things (IoT), the diverse IoT applications with requirements of ultra-low latency and heterogeneous connectivity have been increasing sharply in recent years. In this work, we consider the problem of diverse task offloading and computation resource allocation in the dynamic and heterogeneous MEC-enable network, wherein heterogeneous characterized by the MEC servers with different computing capacities and multi-type applications with different computation requirements. Firstly, to drive the long-term system-wide effectiveness towards a near-optimum, joint task offloading and computation resource allocation is proposed by invoking the Lyapunov optimization theory, and we analyze the tradeoff between task offloading revenue and latency. Besides, a heuristic task offloading methodology based on a search tree is developed to get the optimal offloading strategy in a heterogeneous environment. Moreover, to improve processing efficiency and reduce unnecessary communication overhead, the Offloading Priority Selection Criterion (OPSC) is designed. Finally, the effectiveness and rationality of the algorithm are verified by experimental simulations.

With the rapid growth of Internet of Things (IoT) applications, fog computing enables the IoT to provide efficient services by extending the cloud computing paradigm to the edge of the network. However, the existing attribute-based encryption schemes rarely focus on user and attribute revocation in fog computing and most of them still impose high computational and storage overhead on resource-limited IoT devices. In this article, we propose an efficient attribute-based encryption outsourcing scheme with user and attribute revocation for fog-enabled IoT. The proposed scheme improves the existing encryption scheme that uses the concept of attribute groups to achieve attribute revocation, making it suitable for fog computing and improving the efficiency of ciphertext update. In addition, it implements a novel method of user revocation in fog computing based on the characteristics of fog computing. In order to reduce the computing and storage burden of IoT devices, the heavy computation operations of encryption and decryption are outsourced to fog nodes and part of secret keys are stored in fog nodes. The security analysis shows that the proposed scheme is secure under the Decisional Bilinear Diffie–Hellman (DBDH) assumption. The performance analysis shows that the proposed scheme has high revocation efficiency and is efficient enough to be deployed in practical fog computing.

The tremendous advancement in distributed computing and Internet of Things (IoT) applications has resulted in the adoption of fog computing as today’s widely used framework complementing cloud computing. Thus, suitable and effective applications could be performed to satisfy the applications’ latency requirement. Resource allocation techniques are essential aspects of fog networks which prevent unbalanced load distribution. Effective resource management techniques can improve the quality of service metrics. Due to the limited and heterogeneous resources available within the fog infrastructure, the fog layer’s resources need to be optimised to efficiently manage and distribute them to different applications within the IoT network. There has been limited research on resource management strategies in fog networks in recent years, and a limited systematic review has been done to compile these studies. This article focuses on current developments in resource allocation strategies for fog-IoT networks. A systematic review of resource allocation techniques with the key objective of enhancing QoS is provided. Steps involved in conducting this systematic literature review include developing research goals, accessing studies, categorizing and critically analysing the studies. The resource management approaches engaged in this article are load balancing and task offloading techniques. For the load balancing approach, a brief survey of recent work done according to their sub-categories, including stochastic, probabilistic/statistic, graph theory and hybrid techniques is provided whereas for task offloading, the survey is performed according to the destination of task offloading. Efficient load balancing and task-offloading approaches contribute significantly to resource management, and tremendous effort has been put into this critical topic. Thus, this survey presents an overview of these extents and a comparative analysis. Finally, the study discusses ongoing research issues and potential future directions for developing effective management resource allocation techniques.

A Review on Fog Computing: Architecture, Fog with IoT, Algorithms and Research Challenges

The fog computing paradigm is a promising concept to overcome the exponential increase in data volume in Internet of Things (IoT) applications. This paradigm can support delay-sensitive IoT applications by extending cloud services to the network edge. However, fog computing faces challenges such as resource allocation for applications at the network edge due to limited resources as well as its heterogeneous and distributed nature. This is in line with the goals of microservice architecture and develops the placement of microservice-based IoT applications. The IoT service placement problem (SPP) on fog nodes is known as non-deterministic polynomial-time (NP)-hard. In this study, we introduce a meta-heuristic approach named SPP-differential evolution algorithm (DEA) to handle SPP, which originates from the DEA with a shared parallel architecture. The proposed method takes advantage of the scalable and deployable nature of microservices to minimize the resource utilization and delay as much as possible. SPP-DEA is developed based on monitoring, analysis, decision-making, and execution with knowledge bas (MADE-k) autonomous planning model with the aim of compromise between service cost, response time, resource utilization, and throughput. In order to address the computational complexity of the problem, we consider the resource consumption distribution and service deployment priority in the placement process. In order to evaluate the quality of placement in SPP-DEA, extensive experiments have been performed on a synthetic fog environment. The simulation results show that compared to the state-of-the-art approaches, SPP-DEA reduces the service cost and waiting time by 16% and 11%, respectively.

<p>The vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) has emerged as a heterogeneous network with no fixed infrastructure. In VANET, vehicles are the mobile nodes that communicate with one another and with the infrastructure. One of the major challenges in VANET is to allocate resources efficiently due to environmental characteristics such as highly mobile vehicles, latency-sensitive and short connection times. The conventional resource management mechanisms are not very effective in such an environment. The data-driven Artificial Intelligence (AI) based techniques are a very efficient alternative to traditional statistical techniques. This project proposes an AI-empowered task offloading and computing resource allocation model which can dynamically organize the computing resources in VANET. The model is divided into two layers. First, the task offloading layer, where the Random Forest (RF) algorithm is used to determine whether the vehicle’s computing tasks should be offloaded to the cloud computing (CC) server or mobile edge computing (MEC) server or to be processed locally (in-vehicle computing). Second, the resource allocation layer, where the deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG) algorithm is used to determine the computing platform again when the task is determined to be offloaded to either MEC servers or the cloud servers. To evaluate the performance of the RF classifier, we applied the model to a real-world driving trajectory dataset then compared the results with a different set of machine learning algorithms namely, K-nearest neighbour (KNN), Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) and Support Vector Machine (SVM). The results show the RF model outperformed other models in classification accuracy score of 99.83% for task offloading decision, where the KNN, MLP and SVM achieved 98%, 94.81% and 90.94%, respectively. Moreover, the DDPG based resource allocation scheme converges within 150 episodes. Thus, the proposed model can find the optimal offload decision and the computational resource allocation simultaneously and achieves a high delay to quality-of-service (QoS) satisfaction ratio.</p>

IoT-based smart transportation monitors vehicles, cargo, and driver statuses for safe movement. Due to the limited computational capabilities of the sensors, the IoT devices require powerful remote servers to execute their tasks, and this phenomenon is called task offloading. Researchers have developed efficient task offloading and scheduling mechanisms for IoT devices to reduce energy consumption and response time. However, most research has not considered fault-tolerance-based job allocation for IoT logistics trucks, task and data-aware scheduling, priority-based task offloading, or multiple-parameter-based fog node selection. To overcome the limitations, we proposed a Multi-Objective Task-Aware Offloading and Scheduling Framework for IoT Logistics (MT-OSF). The proposed model prioritizes the tasks into delay-sensitive and computation-intensive tasks using a priority-based offloader and forwards the two lists to the Task-Aware Scheduler (TAS) for further processing on fog and cloud nodes. The Task-Aware Scheduler (TAS) uses a multi-criterion decision-making process, i.e., the analytical hierarchy process (AHP), to calculate the fog nodes' priority for task allocation and scheduling. The AHP decides the fog nodes' priority based on node energy, bandwidth, RAM, and MIPS power. Similarly, the TAS also calculates the shortest distance between the IoT-enabled vehicle and the fog node to which the IoT tasks are assigned for execution. A task-aware scheduler schedules delay-sensitive tasks on nearby fog nodes while allocating computation-intensive tasks to cloud data centers using the FCFS algorithm. Fault-tolerant manager is used to check task failure; if any task fails, the proposed system re-executes the tasks, and if any fog node fails, the proposed system allocates the tasks to another fog node to reduce the task failure ratio. The proposed model is simulated in iFogSim2 and demonstrates a 7% reduction in response time, 16% reduction in energy consumption, and 22% reduction in task failure ratio in comparison to Ant Colony Optimization and Round Robin.

The task offloading and resource allocation strategies aim to provide efficient edge computing services for ground mobile devices in mobile edge computing (MEC) environments. In this paper, we propose a UAV-assisted dynamic deployment and decision-making framework (dDDM) to address the issue of insufficient base station coverage in remote areas or emergency scenarios, which leverages the flexibility and computational capabilities of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to supplement terrestrial cellular networks. We focus on optimizing the UAV trajectory to support and enhance the effectiveness of task offloading and resource allocation strategies under conditions of user mobility and stochastic task arrivals. Therefore, a joint optimization problem is formulated with the objective of minimizing the weighted sum of the total latency of ground mobile devices and the overall energy consumption of UAV. To solve this problem, the original optimization problem is decomposed into two subproblems: UAV trajectory planning, and decision-making for task offloading & computing resource allocation. For the UAV trajectory planning subproblem, we propose an improved particle swarm optimization(PSO) algorithm integrated with <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">K</i>-means clustering, i.e., KMPSO algorithm, enabling dynamic UAV deployment in response to user mobility. For the task offloading and resource allocation decision-making, an improved black-winged kite algorithm (IBKA) is developed to determine optimal offloading and allocation strategies. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed approach outperforms existing benchmark algorithms in terms of both latency and energy consumption.

The widespread adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) has raised significant concerns regarding security and privacy. Among these concerns, access control stands out as a matter of paramount importance, generating substantial interest and discourse. Centralized systems, due to their reliance on external sources, often face challenges related to scalability and availability, which can lead to performance issues. This paper introduces an efficient, decentralized, and innovative approach to implementing secure access control systems within IoT frameworks. The proposed solution leverages a multi-agent system integrated with blockchain technology. The central focus of this methodology revolves around the deployment of Blockchain Managers to ensure the security of IoT access control and facilitate secure communication between neighboring IoT devices. An added advantage of this system lies in its establishment of a secure linkage among fog nodes, cloud servers, and IoT devices.

Fog computing enables the data analysis done nearer to the place of data generated, which makes a very short response time. Trust is essential for the effective performance of the fog nodes to overcome uncertainty, vulnerability, and risk. To enhance the trusted connection in fog computing, blockchain technology is adopted as a solution. Inclusion of blockchain in fog environment ensures consistency and security among the fog nodes. Each fog node mines every transaction and stores them as block creating a chain of blocks. In this proposed work, the adaption of blockchain technology is designed as a suitable solution for establishing trusted security between fog nodes and for which a qualitative assessment is done.

As the most notably emerging wave of Internet deployments, Internet of Things (IoTs) requires mobility support, location awareness and low latency. Fog Computing, also termed edge computing, is a promising solution for IoTs by extending the Cloud Computing paradigm to the edge of Internet. But how to locate fog nodes' sites and determine the scale of each fog node is a main challenge of Fog Computing systems, especially for time sensitive Fog Computing systems. In this paper, we try to deal with this problem by proposing an improved Fast Search and Find of Density Peaks-based fog node location strategy to locate the fog nodes' sites and determine the resources for each located fog node. To this end, we firstly formulate the fog node location of Fog Computing systems as a clustering problem with multi-constraints. Then we propose an improved Fast Search and Find of Density Peaks-based fog node location algorithm, which introduces the time sensitive feature of IoT applications and improves the Fast Search and Find of Density Peaks clustering algorithm to make this clustering algorithm more robustness and adaptability. The experiment results show that our fog node location strategy not also can avoid the NP-hard problem of the traditional server placement strategies, but also has low time complexity.

Fog computing is an encouraging technology in the coming generation to pipeline the breach between cloud data centers and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Fog computing is not a counterfeit for cloud computing but a persuasive counterpart. It also accredits by utilizing the edge of the network while still rendering the possibility to interact with the cloud. Nevertheless, the features of fog computing are encountering novel security challenges. The security of end users and/or fog nodes brings a major dilemma in the implementation of real life scenario. Although there are several works investigated in the security challenges, physical layer security (PLS) in fog computing is not investigated in the above. The distinctive and evolving IoT applications necessitate new security regulations, models, and evaluations disseminated at the network edge. Notwithstanding, the achievement of the current cryptographic solutions in the customary way, many aspects, i.e., system imperfections, hacking skills, and augmented attack, has upheld the inexorableness of the detection techniques. Hence, we investigate PLS that exploits the properties of channel between end user and fog node to detect the impersonation attack in fog computing network. Moreover, it is also challenging to achieve the accurate channel constraints between end user and fog node. Therefore, we propose Q-learning algorithm to attain the optimum value of test threshold in the impersonation attack. The performance of the propose scheme validates and guarantees to detect the impersonation attack accurately in fog computing networks.