Towards a Serverless Platform for Edge Computing

TLDR

Real‑time, data‑intensive mobile and IoT applications challenge centralized data centers, prompting the rise of fog/edge computing where geographically distributed nodes near data prosumers use emerging wireless technologies but have limited resources that must be used efficiently. The paper proposes a serverless platform for edge computing and presents a prototype for assessment. The platform is built on a serverless architecture, offering services and mechanisms that form the building blocks of a Serverless Edge Platform. Obtained results demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed solution for satisfying different application requirements in diverse deployment configurations of heterogeneous fog nodes.

Abstract

The emergence of real-time and data-intensive applications empowered by mobile computing and IoT devices is challenging the success of centralized data centers, and fostering the adoption of the paradigm of fog/edge computing. Differently from cloud data centers, fog nodes are geographically distributed in proximity to data prosumers, taking advantage of the emerging wireless communication technologies and mobile networks. The limited resources of densely distributed fog nodes call for their efficient use by hosted applications and services. To address this challenge, and the needs of different application scenarios, this paper proposes a serverless platform for edge computing. It starts motivating the adoption of a serverless architecture. Then, it presents the services and mechanisms that are the building blocks of a Serverless Edge Platform. The paper also proposes a prototype platform and its assessment. Obtained results demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed solution for satisfying different application requirements in diverse deployment configurations of heterogeneous fog nodes.