Edge and Fog Computing

Edge and Fog Computing

Current applications' requirements are always more demanding, especially in terms of network latency. Just think about self-driving cars, VR/AR, or Industry 4.0. The classic Cloud computing approach cannot satisfy this fundamental capability due to the network distance of the data centers from the devices. But what if we could move these data centers nearer? Obviously, we cannot, but we can gather small servers together in a geographic domain to drastically reduce communication latencies. Today, with single board computers (e.g. Raspberry Pi) we can easily construct clusters of Fog nodes and offload there the computation. Fog Computing is a term that comprehends all of these kinds of computation, Edge Computing is very similar but emphasizes more the idea of the computation moved to the Edge network (e.g. routers or antennas).

What We Do

At the lab, we study distributed algorithms, resource-sharing strategies, and scheduling policies that best fit this new kind of computing paradigm. We have expertise in the mathematical modeling of the problem, simulation tools and in modern technologies like Docker and Kubernetes.

Work With us

If you like these topics and you want to contribute to our research you can work with us in two different ways:

Research Topics

Task Scheduling

That is the problem of designing scheduling and load balancing policies which tries to minimize some parameter like blocking probability or latencies

Resource Sharing

That is the problem of enabling the cooperation among multiple fog nodes

Task Offloading

That is the problem of moving the computation from a mobile device to a fog node for reducing the workload

Equipment

The currently available hardware for research

Raspberry Pi Cluster

We have built a Raspberry Pi 4 Cluster, enclosed in a computer desktop chassis. The cluster comprehends 12x Raspberry Pi 4 and 3x Raspberry Pi 3 connected to a WiFi6 Router which allows experimenting distributed algorithms in a real fog environment

Oculus Quest

The Oculus Quest is a VR headset that can be used in addition to the Raspberry Pi Cluster for emulating a real VR environment, supported by the Fog

Key People

Prof. Roberto Beraldi

beraldi@diag.uniroma1.it

Ing. Gabriele Proietti Mattia

proiettimattia@diag.uniroma1.it

Publications