Edge Analytics in the Internet of Things

TLDR

High‑data‑rate sensors, such as video cameras, are becoming ubiquitous in the Internet of Things. The article introduces GigaSight, an Internet‑scale repository of crowd‑sourced video content that enforces privacy preferences and access controls. GigaSight uses a federated VM‑based cloudlet architecture that performs edge analytics—including privacy‑preserving denaturing and content‑based indexing—to reduce cloud ingress bandwidth. The article appears in a special issue on smart spaces.

Abstract

High-data-rate sensors, such as video cameras, are becoming ubiquitous in the Internet of Things. This article describes GigaSight, an Internet-scale repository of crowd-sourced video content, with strong enforcement of privacy preferences and access controls. The GigaSight architecture is a federated system of VM-based cloudlets that perform video analytics at the edge of the Internet, thus reducing the demand for ingress bandwidth into the cloud. Denaturing, which is an owner-specific reduction in fidelity of video content to preserve privacy, is one form of analytics on cloudlets. Content-based indexing for search is another form of cloudlet-based analytics. This article is part of a special issue on smart spaces.