Combining Mobile and Fog Computing: Using CoAP to Link Mobile Device Clouds with Fog Computing

Abstract

This paper focuses on the use of CoAP as a means of connecting clouds of sensors & smart devices via mobile devices with users. We present an alternative to the hierarchical view on fog-computing by enabling device clouds to interact in a P2P fashion with smart device/sensor clouds. Using the IoT protocol CoAP we expose smart device/sensors and resources in the mobile cloud in a uniform manner as RESful services. The paper presents an evaluation of an Erlang CoAP server and an evaluations of using BLE 4.1 for submitting CoAP messages that span between 1 -- 7 BLE packets.