Decentralized and scalable hybrid scheduling-clustering method for real-time applications in volatile and dynamic Fog-Cloud Environments

Abstract

Abstract A major challenge in Cloud-Fog settings is the scheduling of workflow applications with time constraints as the environment is highly volatile and dynamic. Furthermore, adding the complexities of handling IoT nodes, as the major owners of the workflow requests, renders the problem space even harder to address. This paper presents a hybrid scheduling-clustering method for addressing this challenge. The proposed lightweight, decentralized, and dynamic clustering algorithm is based on fuzzy inference with intrinsic support for mobility to form stable and well-sized clusters of IoT nodes while avoiding global clustering and recurrent re-clustering. The proposed distributed method uses Cloud resources along with clusters of mobile and inert Fog nodes to schedule time-constrained workflow applications with considering a proper balance between contradicting criteria and promoting scalability and adaptability. The Velociraptor simulator (version 0.6.7) has been used to throughtly examine and compare the proposed method in real workloads with two contemporary and noteworthy methods. The evaluation results show the superiority of the proposed method as the resource utilization is about 20% better and the schedule success rate is almost 21% better compared with the two other methods. Also, other parameters such as throughput and energy consumption have been studied and reported.

Keywords

• Fog computing
• Workflow scheduling algorithm
• Clustering
• Fuzzy inference system