Enhanced Service Framework Based on Microservice Management and Client Support Provider for Efficient User Experiment in Edge Computing Environment

Leveraging the edge computing paradigm, computing resources are deployed in the network edge to provide heterogeneous services. Edge computing delivers sensing and actuating services to the Internet from the constrained Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Meanwhile, management of various elements is provided by offloading sufficient computing and storage to the edge of the networks for the IoT environments such as home, factory, and private spaces without cloud servers. In this paper, we propose an enhanced service framework based on microservice management and client support provider for efficient user experiments in the edge computing environment. For providing the edge computing service and management in the network edge, this paper presents an edge-computing architecture that provides various functions through microservice modules on the edge platform engine. Through the microservices, the interfaces are provided to the client to access the device, data, and additional services. Using Docker, the microservice modules are deployed in the edge platform to provide the services. However, the services and management functions need to be presented to the clients based on the friendly user interfaces. For providing the user interfaces of the services and Docker engine to the clients, the client support service provider is developed and deployed in the network edge based on the edge platform. Therefore, the proposed edge platform provides the services and management to the users for accessing the resources and functions through visualized interfaces in the IoT environment based on edge computing. The performance of our proposed system can be checked through the test result screen and delay time. Compared to controlling edge computing by using a command-line tool for users, we made it easy for general users who are not computer savvy to access edge services through a graphic user interface. And by measuring the delay time and comparing the execution time, it can be seen that the proposed system operates faster.