Fog Computing for the Internet of Things

TLDR

The Internet of Things envisions ubiquitous connectivity of everyday objects, yet resource‑constrained devices cannot host application services alone, prompting the emergence of Fog Computing, which extends cloud capabilities to the network edge and distributes computing, storage, and networking resources closer to end devices. This survey reviews how Fog Computing supports IoT devices and services and identifies research directions likely to have the greatest impact. The authors describe Fog Computing principles, highlight six IoT application domains that benefit from it, and review existing software, hardware platforms, and OpenFog Consortium standardization efforts. The survey finds that emerging research directions and standardization initiatives are poised to significantly influence Fog Computing’s adoption in IoT, while existing platforms demonstrate its practical viability.

Abstract

Research in the Internet of Things (IoT) conceives a world where everyday objects are connected to the Internet and exchange, store, process, and collect data from the surrounding environment. IoT devices are becoming essential for supporting the delivery of data to enable electronic services, but they are not sufficient in most cases to host application services directly due to their intrinsic resource constraints. Fog Computing (FC) can be a suitable paradigm to overcome these limitations, as it can coexist and cooperate with centralized Cloud systems and extends the latter toward the network edge. In this way, it is possible to distribute resources and services of computing, storage, and networking along the Cloud-to-Things continuum. As such, FC brings all the benefits of Cloud Computing (CC) closer to end (user) devices. This article presents a survey on the employment of FC to support IoT devices and services. The principles and literature characterizing FC are described, highlighting six IoT application domains that may benefit from the use of this paradigm. The extension of Cloud systems towards the network edge also creates new challenges and can have an impact on existing approaches employed in Cloud-based deployments. Research directions being adopted by the community are highlighted, with an indication of which of these are likely to have the greatest impact. An overview of existing FC software and hardware platforms for the IoT is also provided, along with the standardisation efforts in this area initiated by the OpenFog Consortium (OFC).