Task offloading in Edge and Cloud Computing: A survey on mathematical, artificial intelligence and control theory solutions

With the rapid development of Internet of Things (IoT), mobile crowdsensing (MCS), i.e., outsourcing sensing tasks to mobile devices or vehicles, has been proposed to address the problem of data collection in the scenarios such as smart city. Despite its benefits for a wide range of applications, MCS lacks an efficient incentive mechanism, restricting the development of IoT applications, especially for Internet of Vehicles (IoV)—a typical example of IoT applications; this is because vehicles are usually reluctant to participate these sensing tasks. Moreover, in practice, some sensing tasks may arrive suddenly (called an emergent task) in the IoV environment, but the resources of a single vehicle may be insufficient to handle, and thus multivehicles collaboration is required. In this case, the incentive mechanisms for the participation of multiple vehicles and the task scheduling for their collaborations are collectively needed. To address this important problem, we first propose a new model for the scenario of two vehicles collaboration, considering the situation of the emergent appearance of a task. In this model, for a general sensing task, we propose a bidding mechanism to better encourage vehicles to contribute their resources, and the tasks for those vehicles are scheduled accordingly. Second, for an emergent task, a novel time-window-based method is devised to manage the tasks among vehicles and to incent the vehicles to participate. Finally, we develop a blockchain framework to achieve the secured information exchange through smart contract for the proposed models in IoV.

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An Efficient Collaboration and Incentive Mechanism for Internet of Vehicles (IoV) With Secured Information Exchange Based on Blockchains

Survey on blockchain-based applications in internet of vehicles

With the proliferation of mobile devices and a wealth of rich application services, the Internet of vehicles (IoV) has struggled to handle computationally intensive and delay-sensitive computing tasks. To substantially reduce the latency and the energy consumption, application work is offloaded from a mobile device to a remote cloud or a nearby mobile edge cloud for processing. Compared with remote clouds, mobile edge clouds are located at the edge of the network. Therefore, mobile edge computing (MEC) has the advantages of effectively utilizing idle computing and storage resources at the edge of the network and reducing the network transmission delay. In addition, mobile devices are increasingly moving toward intelligence. To satisfy the service experience and service quality requirements of mobile users, the vehicle Internet is transforming into the intelligent vehicle Internet. Artificial intelligence (AI) technology can adapt to rapidly changing dynamic environments to provide multiple task requirements for resource allocation, computational task scheduling, and vehicle trajectory prediction. On this basis, combined with MEC technology and AI technology, computing and storage resources are placed on the edge of the network to provide real-time data processing while providing more efficient and intelligent services. This article introduces IoV from three aspects, namely, MEC, AI and the advantages of combining the two, and analyzes the corresponding architecture and implementation technology. The application of MEC and AI in IoV is analyzed and compared with current approaches. Finally, several promising future directions in the field of IoV are discussed.

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Artificial Intelligence-Empowered Edge of Vehicles: Architecture, Enabling Technologies, and Applications

5G technologies promise faster connections, lower latency, higher reliability, more capacity and wider coverage. We are looking to rely on these technologies to achieve Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communications, which increase the safety and autonomy of vehicles in addition to road safety, saving energy and costs. The integration of vehicular communication systems and 5G is the subject of many research. Nowadays, researchers address challenges such as automated and intelligent networks, cloud and edge data processing, network management, virtualization, security, privacy and finally interoperability. This paper provides a survey of the latest V2X use cases including requirements, and various 5G enabling technologies under consideration for vehicular communications. Subsequently, we first provide an interesting mapping between the three 5G pillars and V2X use case groups. Then, we present a summary of potential applications of enabling technologies for V2X use case groups. Finally, the open directions of research are discussed, and the challenges that await to be met are pointed out.

On 5G-V2X Use Cases and Enabling Technologies: A Comprehensive Survey

IoV, bringing smartness into the vehicular environment, represents the future of the vehicular networks. To improve the IoV network management, resource utilization and QoS, a new architecture integrating the SDN technology have been proposed: SD-IoV. However, this architecture introduces new threats and, in particular, security is an important challenge. One of the major shortcomings with security is the lack of authentication and authorization of the applications (network, third party or user) at the distributed SD-IoV control layer. Indeed, these applications are currently able to control the SDN controllers and therefore the network behavior without any restriction. Consequently, a malicious or compromised application could easily disturb the entire network. That is why this paper proposes an innovative trust establishment system based on the blockchain technology. This system aims to control the application identity, as well as the application behavior and the network resources allocation and management. The ideas of application identity and application trust index, using the distributed nature of the SD-IoV, are introduced. Moreover, a design of this system, using smart contracts is also presented.

Towards a Blockchain-Based SD-IoV for Applications Authentication and Trust Management

Despite the expanded efforts, the vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) are still facing many challenges such as network performances, network scalability and context-awareness. Many solutions have been proposed to overcome these obstacles, and the edge computing, an extension of the cloud computing, is one of them. With edge computing, communication, storage and computational capabilities are brought closer to end users. This could offer many benefits to the global vehicular network including, for example, lower latency, network off-loading and context-awareness (location, environment factors, etc.). Different approaches of edge computing have been developed: mobile edge computing (MEC), fog computing (FC) and cloudlet are the main ones. After introducing the vehicular environment background, this paper aims to study and compare these different technologies. For that purpose their main features are compared and the state-of-the-art applications in VANETs are analyzed. In addition, MEC, FC, and cloudlet are classified and their suitability level is debated for different types of vehicular applications. Finally, some challenges and future research directions in the fields of edge computing and VANETs are discussed.

Edge Computing Based Applications in Vehicular Environments: Comparative Study and Main Issues

Software Defined Vehicular Networking (SDVN) could be the future of the vehicular networks, enabling interoperability between heterogeneous networks and mobility management. Thus, the deployment of large SDVN is considered. However, SDVN is facing major security issues, in particular, authentication and access control issues. Indeed, an unauthorized SDN controller could modify the behavior of switches (packet redirection, packet drops) and an unauthorized switch could disrupt the operation of the network (reconnaissance attack, malicious feedback). Due to the SDVN features (decentralization, mobility) and the SDVN requirements (flexibility, scalability), the Blockchain technology appears to be an efficient way to solve these authentication and access control issues. Therefore, many Blockchain-based approaches have already been proposed. However, two key challenges have not been addressed: authentication and access control for SDN controllers and high scalability for the underlying Blockchain network. That is why in this paper we propose an innovative and scalable architecture, based on a set of interconnected Blockchain sub-networks. Moreover, an efficient access control mechanism and a cross-sub-networks authentication/revocation mechanism are proposed for all SDVN devices (vehicles, roadside equipment, SDN controllers). To demonstrate the benefits of our approach, its performances are compared with existing solutions in terms of throughput, latency, CPU usage and read/write access to the Blockchain ledger. In addition, we determine an optimal number of Blockchain sub-networks according to different parameters such as the number of certificates to store and the number of requests to process.

A Scalable Blockchain-based Approach for Authentication and Access Control in Software Defined Vehicular Networks

In the coming years, the vehicular networks should be integrated in a global 5G network. Indeed, the 5G system aims to respond to a wide range of services including Ultra-Reliable and Low-Latency Communications (URLLC) and, therefore, vehicular communications. However, the current Cooperative-Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS) architecture does not meet the key design recommendations of the 5G architecture design. Thus, this integration is not possible yet. Indeed, five different improvements should be considered to make it possible: network intelligence and automation, edge data processing and interoperability, network control, environment virtualization and finally security and privacy. Different papers have already proposed architectures enabling some of these improvements through the integration of different technologies in the C-ITS architecture. To highlight their strengths and their limits, these states-of-the-art solutions are compared. None of them propose a solution meeting the five identified improvements. That is why this paper presents a new architecture taking all these improvements into account. In particular, to complete the existing work, automation, security, privacy and trust are considered. To do so, a knowledge plane enhancing the functioning of the whole architecture is designed. Moreover, a security and privacy plane, strengthening trust in the vehicular environment thanks to Blockchain, is proposed. The role of the different components of this four-plane architecture is also described. Finally, some of the main challenges of the deployment of the proposed architecture are discussed.

Leo Mendiboure

Papers

Survey on blockchain-based applications in internet of vehicles

Towards a Blockchain-Based SD-IoV for Applications Authentication and Trust Management

Edge Computing Based Applications in Vehicular Environments: Comparative Study and Main Issues

A Scalable Blockchain-based Approach for Authentication and Access Control in Software Defined Vehicular Networks

Towards a 5G Vehicular Architecture