The fast-paced development of power systems necessitates the smart grid (SG) to facilitate real-time control and monitoring with bidirectional communication and electricity flows. In order to meet the computational requirements for SG applications, cloud computing (CC) provides flexible resources and services shared in network, parallel processing, and omnipresent access. Even though CC model is considered to be efficient for SG, it fails to guarantee the Quality-of-Experience (QoE) requirements for the SG services, viz. latency, bandwidth, energy consumption, and network cost. Fog Computing (FC) extends CC by deploying localized computing and processing facilities into the edge of the network, offering location-awareness, low latency, and latency-sensitive analytics for mission critical requirements of SG applications. By deploying localized computing facilities at the premise of users, it pre-stores the cloud data and distributes to SG users with fast-rate local connections. In this paper, we first examine the current state of cloud based SG architectures and highlight the motivation(s) for adopting FC as a technology enabler for real-time SG analytics. We also present a three layer FC-based SG architecture, characterizing its features towards integrating massive number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices into future SG. We then propose a cost optimization model for FC that jointly investigates data consumer association, workload distribution, virtual machine placement and Quality-of-Service (QoS) constraints. The formulated model is a Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Programming (MINLP) problem which is solved using Modified Differential Evolution (MDE) algorithm. We evaluate the proposed framework on real world parameters and show that for a network with approximately 50% time critical applications, the overall service latency for FC is nearly half to that of cloud paradigm. We also observed that the FC lowers the aggregated power consumption of the generic CC model by more than 44%.

With the emergence of delay- and energy-critical vehicular applications, forwarding sense-actuate data from vehicles to the cloud became practically infeasible. Therefore, a new computational model called Vehicular Fog Computing (VFC) was proposed. It offloads the computation workload from passenger devices (PDs) to transportation infrastructures such as roadside units (RSUs) and base stations (BSs), called static fog nodes. It can also exploit the underutilized computation resources of nearby vehicles that can act as vehicular fog nodes (VFNs) and provide delay- and energy-aware computing services. However, the capacity planning and dimensioning of VFC, which come under a class of facility location problems (FLPs), is a challenging issue. The complexity arises from the spatio-temporal dynamics of vehicular traffic, varying resource demand from PD applications, and the mobility of VFNs. This paper proposes a multi-objective optimization model to investigate the facility location in VFC networks. The solutions to this model generate optimal VFC topologies pertaining to an optimized trade-off (Pareto front) between the service delay and energy consumption. Thus, to solve this model, we propose a hybrid Evolutionary Multi-Objective (EMO) algorithm called Swarm Optimized Non-dominated sorting Genetic algorithm (SONG). It combines the convergence and search efficiency of two popular EMO algorithms: the Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm (NSGA-II) and Speed-constrained Particle Swarm Optimization (SMPSO). First, we solve an example problem using the SONG algorithm to illustrate the delay–energy solution frontiers and plotted the corresponding layout topology. Subsequently, we evaluate the evolutionary performance of the SONG algorithm on real-world vehicular traces against three quality indicators: Hyper-Volume (HV), Inverted Generational Distance (IGD) and CPU delay gap. The empirical results show that SONG exhibits improved solution quality over the NSGA-II and SMPSO algorithms and hence can be utilized as a potential tool by the service providers for the planning and design of VFC networks.

The advent of intelligent vehicular applications and IoT technologies gives rise to data-intensive challenges across different architectural layers of an intelligent transportation system (ITS). Without powerful communication and computational infrastructure, various vehicular applications and services will still stay in the concept phase and cannot be put into practice in daily life. The current cloud computing and cellular set-ups are far from perfect because they are highly dependent on, and bear the cost of additional infrastructure deployment. Thus, the geo-distributed ITS components require a paradigm shift from centralized cloud-scale processing to edge centered fog computing (FC) paradigms. FC outspreads the computing facilities into the edge of a network, offering location-awareness, latency-sensitive monitoring, and intelligent control. In this article, the authors identify the mission-critical computing needs of the next generation ITS applications and highlight the scopes of FC based solutions towards addressing them. Then, the authors discuss the scenarios where the underutilized communication and computational resources available in connected vehicles can be brought in to perform the role of FC infrastructures. Then the authors present a service-oriented software architecture (SOA) for FC-based Big Data Analytics in ITS applications. The authors also provide a detailed analysis of the potential challenges of using connected vehicles as FC infrastructures along with future research directions.

Vehicular Edge Computing (VEC) is a critical enabler for intelligent transportation systems (ITS). It provides low-latency and energy-efficient services by offloading computation to the network edge. Effective edge server placement is essential for optimizing system performance, particularly in dynamic vehicular environments characterized by mobility and variability. The Edge Server Placement Problem (ESPP) addresses the challenge of minimizing latency and energy consumption while ensuring scalability and adaptability in real-world scenarios. This paper proposes a framework to solve the ESPP using real-world vehicular mobility traces to simulate realistic conditions. To achieve optimal server placement, we evaluate the effectiveness of several advanced evolutionary algorithms. These include the Genetic Algorithm (GA), Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (NSGA-II), Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), Ant Colony Optimization (ACO), and Teaching-Learning-Based Optimization (TLBO). Each algorithm is analyzed for its ability to optimize multiple objectives under varying network conditions. Our results show that ACO performs the best, producing well-distributed pareto-optimal solutions and balancing trade-offs effectively. GA and PSO exhibit faster convergence and better energy efficiency, making them suitable for scenarios requiring rapid decisions. The proposed framework is validated through extensive simulations and compared with state-of-the-art methods. It consistently outperforms them in reducing latency and energy consumption. This study provides actionable insights into algorithm selection and deployment strategies for VEC, addressing mobility, scalability, and resource optimization challenges. The findings contribute to the development of robust, scalable VEC infrastructures, enabling the efficient implementation of next-generation ITS applications.