MCDM-based Optimal Gateway Selection in Mobile Fog Computing

Abstract

The use of ubiquitous and pervasive computing and technological advancements have made mobile Internet of Things, an essential component across many next-generation domains, like land vehicular networks, transportation systems, and maritime networks. These mobile IoT applications demands, which call for persistent connectivity between mobile IoT devices and IoT infrastructure, have led to the evolution of mobile fog computing. Mobile fog computing makes fog services available everywhere within the coverage of fog networks, even when users and mobile IoT devices are mobile. The massive amounts of data produced by mobile IoT devices must first be preprocessed by choosing suitable mobile fog nodes that serve as gateways before being transferred to other fog nodes and the cloud. However, the dynamic context factors, high workloads, heterogeneity, reliability, and mobility of the participating objects make gateway selection in mobile fog computing a significant issue. Therefore, in this article, we propose a novel multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) algorithm to choose the best gateway for mobile IoT devices, that takes into account factors like the distance between candidate gateways and IoT devices as well as the resources of candidate gateways like processing power, memory, and bandwidth. We simulate MFC environment using MATLAB and execute the MCDM algorithm using a case study of smart traffic management in an underwater surveillance system. The results of MCDM are compared with random gateway selection algorithm. The obtained results show that our proposed approach performs 59% better in overall packet transmission and 80% percent better network lifetimes.