Fog Computing is an emerging paradigm, suitable to serve the particular needs of IoT networks. It includes the deployment of computational devices at the edge of the network facilitating faster real-time processing of time-sensitive data. In this article, we present a Fog architecture, which diverges from the traditional hierarchical and centralized Fog model, and adopts a cooperative model, which allows for a federation of Edge networks. In our proposal, the tasks that the nodes are called to complete, are characterized according to their computational nature and are subsequently allocated to the appropriate host. Edge networks communicate through a brokering system with IoT systems in an asynchronous way via the Pub/Sub messaging pattern.

Search and Rescue (SaR) dogs are important assets in the hands of first responders, as they have the ability to locate the victim even in cases where the vision and or the sound is limited, due to their inherent talents in olfactory and auditory senses. In this work, we propose a deep-learning-assisted implementation incorporating a wearable device, a base station, a mobile application, and a cloud-based infrastructure that can first monitor in real-time the activity, the audio signals, and the location of a SaR dog, and second, recognize and alert the rescuing team whenever the SaR dog spots a victim. For this purpose, we employed deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) both for the activity recognition and the sound classification, which are trained using data from inertial sensors, such as 3-axial accelerometer and gyroscope and from the wearable’s microphone, respectively. The developed deep learning models were deployed on the wearable device, while the overall proposed implementation was validated in two discrete search and rescue scenarios, managing to successfully spot the victim (i.e., obtained F1-score more than 99%) and inform the rescue team in real-time for both scenarios.

With the advent of Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) technologies, the networking infrastructures are becoming increasingly agile in their attempts to offer the quality of services needed by the users, maximizing the efficiency of infrastructure utilization. This in essence mandates the statistical multiplexing of demands across the infrastructures of different Network Providers (NPs), which would allow them to cope with the increasing demand, upgrading their infrastructures at a slower pace. However, to enjoy the benefits of statistical multiplexing, a trusted authority to govern it would be required. At the same time, blockchain technology aspires to offer a solid advantage in such untrusted environments, enabling the development of decentralized solutions that ensure the integrity and immutability of the information stored in the digital ledger. To this end, in this paper, we propose a blockchain-based solution that allows NPs to trade their (processing and networking) resources. We implemented the solution in a test-bed deployed on the cloud and we present the gathered performance results, showing that a blockchain-based solution is feasible and appropriate. We also discuss further improvements and challenges.

The optimum utilization of infrastructural resources is a highly desired yet cumbersome task for service providers to achieve. This is because the optimal amount of such resources is a function of various parameters, such as the desired/agreed quality of service (QoS), the service characteristics/profile, workload and service life-cycle. The advent of frameworks that foresee the dynamic establishment and placement of service and network functions further contributes to a decrease in the effectiveness of traditional resource allocation methods. In this work, we address this problem by developing a mechanism which first performs service profiling and then a prediction of the resources that would lead to the desired QoS for each newly deployed service. The main elements of our approach are as follows: (a) the collection of data from all three layers of the deployed infrastructure (hardware, virtual and service), instead of a single layer of the deployed infrastructure, to provide a clearer picture on the potential system break points, (b) the study of well-known container based implementations following that microservice paradigm and (c) the use of a data analysis routine that employs a set of machine learning algorithms and performs accurate predictions of the required resources for any future service requests. We investigate the performance of the proposed framework using our open-source implementation to examine the case of a Hadoop cluster. The results show that running a small number of tests is adequate to assess the main system break points and at the same time to attain accurate resource predictions for any future request.