Context-aware edge process management for mobile thing-to-fog environment

Abstract

Service-oriented Workflow Management Systems (WfMS) have been utilised as an efficient solution to manage the objects and activities involved in Internet of Things (IoT) systems. As researchers have identified the drawbacks of the conventional centralised architecture which relies on the distant, central management server for managing all processes, recent IoT systems architectures have started including mechanisms for distributing computational or networking processes and decision making at the edge network, where the front-end IoT devices are located. We term processes involved in this paradigm as Edge Processes. Managing Edge Processes faces challenges when the involved IoT devices are moving. Specifically, improper timing of executing processes & their subtasks will cause the waste of resources such as battery consumption. Hence, edge processes require adaptive scheduling schemes to increase efficiency and reduce waste of resources. In this paper, we propose an edge process management system architecture together with an adaptive task scheduling scheme which addresses the described issue.