No abstract

Edge computing is a novel computing paradigm moving server resources closer to enddevices. In the context of IoT, Edge computing is a centric technology for enabling reliable, context-aware and low-latency services for several application areas such as smart healthcare, smart industry and smart cities. In our previous work, we have proposed a three-tier IoT Edge architecture and a virtual decentralized service platform based on lightweight microservices, called nanoservices, running on it. Together, these proposals form a basis for virtualizing the available local computational capacity and utilizing it to provide localized resource-efficient IoT services based on the applications' need. Furthermore, locally deployed functions are resilient to access network problems and can limit the propagation of sensitive user data for improved privacy. In this paper, we propose an automatic service and resource discovery mechanism for efficient on-the-fly deployment of nanoservices on local IoT nodes. As use case, we have selected a healthcare remote monitoring scenario, which requires high service reliability and availability in a highly dynamic environment. Based on the selected use case, we propose a real-world prototype implementation of the proposed mechanism on Raspberry Pi platform. We evaluate the performance and resourceefficiency of the proposed resource matching function with two alternative deployment approaches: containerized and non-containerized deployment. The results show that the containerized deployment is more resource-efficient, while the resource discovery and matching process takes approximately 6-17 seconds, where containerization adds only 1-1.5 seconds. This can be considered a feasible price for streamlined service management, scalability, resource-efficiency and fault-tolerance. IoT, edge computing, distributed computing, virtualization, resource discovery, microservices, nanoservices. INDEX TERMS

Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) is recognised as a solution in future networks to offload computation and data storage from mobile and IoT devices to the servers at the edge of mobile networks. It reduces the network traffic and service latency compared to passing all data to cloud data centers while offering greater processing power than handling tasks locally at terminals. Since MEC servers are scattered throughout the radio access network, their computation capacities are modest in comparison to large cloud data centers. Therefore, offloading decision between MEC and cloud server should minimize the usage of the resources while maximizing the number of accepted delay critical requests. In this work we formulate the joint optimization of communication and computation resources allocation for computation offloading (CO) requests with strict latency constraints. We show that the global optimization problem is NP-hard and propose an efficient heuristic solution based on the single user optimal solution. Simulation results are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, compared to optimal and baseline solution where tasks are allocated in the order of arrival, with different system parameters. They show that our algorithm performs close to the optimal in terms of resource utilization and outperforms the baseline algorithm in terms of acceptance rate.INDEX TERMS Cloud computing, multi access edge computing (MEC), computational offloading (CO), end-to-end latency, limited-latency services, joint resource allocation.

The rapid evolution of technology allows the healthcare sector to adopt intelligent, context-aware, secure, and ubiquitous healthcare services. Together with the global trend of an aging population, it has become highly important to propose value-creating, yet cost-efficient digital solutions for healthcare systems. These solutions should provide effective means of healthcare services in both the hospital and home care scenarios. In this paper, we focused on the latter case, where the goal was to provide easy-to-use, reliable, and secure remote monitoring and aid for elderly persons at their home. We proposed a framework to integrate the capabilities of edge computing and blockchain technology to address some of the key requirements of smart remote healthcare systems, such as long operating times, low cost, resilience to network problems, security, and trust in highly dynamic network conditions. In order to assess the feasibility of our approach, we evaluated the performance of our framework in terms of latency, power consumption, network utilization, and computational load, compared to a scenario where no blockchain was used.

In this paper, we consider context-awareness to enhance route reliability and robustness in multi-hop cognitive networks. A novel context-aware route discovery protocol is presented to enable secondary users to select the route according to their QoS requirements. The protocol facilitates adjacent relay selection under different criteria, such as shortest available path, route reliability and relay reputation. New routing and securitybased metrics are defined to measure route robustness in spatial, frequency and temporal domains. Secure throughput, defined as the percentage of traffic not being intercepted in the network, is provided. The resources needed for trading are then obtained by jointly optimizing secure throughput and trading price. Simulation results show that when there is a traffic imbalance of factor 4 between the primary and secondary networks, 4 channels are needed to achieve 90% link reliability and 99% secure throughput in the secondary network. Besides, when relay reputation varies from 0.5 to 0.9, a 20% variation in the required resources is observed.