ETC-IoT: Edge-Node-Assisted Transmitting for the Cloud-Centric Internet of Things

The promising emergence of cloud systems can bring significant benefits to cloud-centric IoT applications in terms of both their platform management and improvements to quality of service. Edge or fog computing, where edge nodes mainly contribute their computing resources voluntarily, has been attracting great attention for their ability to overcome scalability problems and to alleviate the load of cloud computing servers in the traditional cloud-centric IoT architecture. However, since high-data-rate devices have become ubiquitous in IoT and huge amounts of data need to be transmitted to end users, providing such a platform by renting a service from commercial clouds is costly and inefficient. Thus, this article describes a novel approach for edge-node-assisted data transmission in the cloud-centric IoT architecture (ETC-IoT) to overcome the problem of overwhelming bandwidth consumption in the cloud. It explores the bandwidth resources of edge nodes by extending the existing paradigm of edge computing in the cloud-centric IoT architecture. Specifically, the central cloud sends the replicas of IoT data to edge nodes according to designed replica distribution strategies. Then an edge node owning the replicas can respond to multiple requests from its associated local end users by using its bandwidth resources, while the central cloud supplements any shortfall to satisfy end-user demands if edge nodes cannot accommodate requests.