piFogBed: A Fog Computing Testbed Based on Raspberry Pi

The fog computing testbed can accelerate the development of fog computing. But so far, there is no real dedicated fog computing testbed to help researchers to test their prototypes, designs, and distributed algorithms in real fog computing scenarios. Researchers often verify their fog computing solutions by adapting some existing testbeds or using simulators under specific conditions, which may make their experimental results unable to withstand the examination of real production environments. This paper proposes piFogBed, the first fog computing testbed for rapid prototyping fog computing components in real environments by using Raspberry Pies and the Docker container. It can be integrated into the existing production network quickly and flexibly. To evaluate piFogBed, we demonstrate its experimental process with a medical monitoring use case, and also verify its feasibility, effectiveness and fidelity. The cost of each fog node of the proposed testbed is only 400 RMB, which is very low compared with the special fog computing equipment, so it is worth promoting and applying.