Internet of Things A to Z

4Cloud and Fog Computing in the Internet of Things

Daniel Happ

Telecommunication Networks Group (TKN), Technische Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

4.1 Introduction

In contrast to classical wireless sensor networks (WSN) that usually only serve a single application, one of the core benefits of the shift to the IoT lies in the common usage of sensor hardware by heterogeneous applications (Tschofenig et al., 2015). Additionally, the revolution of the IoT does not stem from the number of connected things alone, but from the solutions and services offered on top of the data. The basic requirements of such value-added services can be briefly summarized into nonvolatile storage of historical sensor data, sensor data processing, and efficient near-real-time distribution of sensor data.

However, although everyday objects are increasingly connected to the Internet and becoming more and more powerful, they are usually not capable enough to fulfill all those requirements themselves. One of the major challenges is that commonly used devices, such as sensor nodes, smartphones, and wearable techs, usually run on battery power, making storage or complex processing of a large amount of data unfeasible. Mains-operated connected objects may also often be too constrained to perform those tasks as reliably and quickly as required.

The recent advances in cloud computing have led to an increasing usage of this model to meet the aforementioned requirements and enable value-added services in the ...