Akka framework based on the Actor model for executing distributed Fog Computing applications

Abstract

Future Internet of Things (IoT)-driven applications will move from the cloud-centric IoT model to the hybrid distributed processing model, known as Fog computing, where some of the involved computational tasks (e.g. real-time data analytics) are partially moved to the edge of the network to reduce latency and improve the network efficiency. In recent times, Fog computing has generated significant research interest for IoT applications, however, there is still a lack of ideal approach and framework for supporting parallel and fault-tolerant execution of the tasks while collectively utilizing the resource-constrained Fog devices. To address this issue, in this paper, we propose an Akka framework based on the Actor Model for designing and executing the distributed Fog applications. The Actor Model was conceived as a universal paradigm for concurrent computation with additional requirements such as resiliency and scalability, whereas, the Akka toolkit is a reference implementation of the model. Further, to dynamically deploy the distributed applications on the Fog networks, a Docker containerization approach is used. To validate the proposed actor-based framework, a wireless sensor network case study is designed and implemented for demonstrating the feasibility of conceiving applications on the Fog networks. Besides that, a detailed analysis is produced for showing the performance and parallelization efficiency of the proposed model on the resource-constrained gateway and Fog devices.