FogBus: A Blockchain-based Lightweight Framework for Edge and Fog Computing

Recently much emphasize is given on integrating Edge, Fog and Cloud infrastructures to support the execution of various latency sensitive and computing intensive Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Although different real-world frameworks attempt to assist such integration, they have limitations in respect of platform independence, security, resource management and multi-application execution. To address these limitations, we propose a framework, named FogBus that facilitates end-to-end IoT-Fog(Edge)-Cloud integration. FogBus offers platform independent interfaces to IoT applications and computing instances for execution and interaction. It not only assists developers to build applications but also helps users to run multiple applications at a time and service providers to manage their resources. Moreover, FogBus applies Blockchain, authentication and encryption techniques to secure operations on sensitive data. Due to its simplified and cross platform software systems, it is easy to deploy, scalable and cost efficient. We demonstrate the effectiveness of FogBus by creating a computing environment with it that integrates finger pulse oximeters as IoT devices with Smartphone-based gateway and Raspberry Pi-based Fog nodes for Sleep Apnea analysis. We also evaluate the characteristics of FogBus in respect of other existing frameworks and the impact of various FogBus settings on system parameters through deployment of a real-world IoT application. The experimental results show that FogBus is comparatively lightweight and responsive, and different FogBus settings can tune the computing environment as per the situation demands