Fog Computing in Real Time Resource Limited IoT Environments

Cloud computing is omnipresent and plays an important role in today’s world of Internet of Things (IoT). Several IoT devices and their applications already run and communicate through the cloud, easing the configuration burden for their users. With the expected exponential growth on the number of connected IoT devices this centralized approach raises latency, privacy and scalability concerns. This paper proposes the use of fog computing to overcome those concerns. It presents an architecture intended to distribute the communication, computation and storage loads to small gateways, close to the edge of the network, in charge of a group of IoT devices. This approach saves battery on end devices, enables local sensor fusion and fast response to urgent situations while improving user privacy. This architecture was implemented and tested on a project to monitor the level of used cooking oil, stored in barrels, in some restaurants where low cost, battery powered end devices are periodically reporting sensor data. Results show a 93% improvement in end device battery life (by reducing their communication time) and a 75% saving on cloud storage (by processing raw data on the fog device).