Handling Multiple Events in IoT Environments: A Workflow-Based FaaS System

Internet of Things(IoT) systems are increasingly implemented as Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) on edge cloud platforms, enabling efficient utilization of edge cloud resources by executing services based on various events. Recently, research has been focused on extending event-driven FaaS frameworks to support complex event processing, meeting the diverse requirements of modern IoT applications. However, implementing multi-event processing based on predefined scenarios and fixed functions introduces limitations in accommodating new event types, integrating new functions, modifying existing functions, and dynamically reconfiguring event-function mappings. These constraints hinder the operational flexibility and scalability required in dynamic IoT environments. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a workflow-based FaaS framework enabling flexible function modification and extension while supporting the reuse of existing functions. The proposed system is implemented to demonstrate the efficiency of system operation by overcoming the limitations of the monolithic implementation method of existing complex event processing systems and is evaluated in terms of response time and performance. The evaluation results showed that compared to the existing fixed scenario-based monolithic event processing system, our system has flexibility in system operation, scalability, reusability of functions, and operates within an acceptable processing time at the IoT service level.