Survey on Fog Computing: Architecture, Key Technologies, Applications and Open Issues

The emergence of Internet of Things (IoT) has enabled the interconnection and intercommunication among massive ubiquitous things, which caused an unprecedented generation of huge and heterogeneous amount of data, known as data explosions. On the other hand, although that cloud computing has served as an efficient way to process and store these data, however, challenges, such as the increasing demands of real time or latency-sensitive applications and the limitation of network bandwidth, still cannot be solved by using only cloud computing. Therefore, a new computing paradigm, known as fog computing, has been proposed as a complement to the cloud solution. Fog computing extends the cloud services to the edge of network, and makes computation, communication and storage closer to edge devices and end-users, which aims to enhance low-latency, mobility, network bandwidth, security and privacy. In this paper, we will overview and summarize fog computing model architecture, key technologies, applications, challenges and open issues. Firstly, we will present the hierarchical architecture of fog computing and its characteristics, and compare it with cloud computing and edge computing to emphasize the similarities and differences. Then, the key technologies like computing, communication and storage technologies, naming, resource management, security and privacy protection are introduced to present how to support its deployment and application in a detailed manner. Several application cases like health care, augmented reality, brain machine interface and gaming, smart environments and vehicular fog computing are also presented to further explain fog computing application scenarios. Finally, based on the observation, we propose some challenges and open issues which are worth further in-depth study and research in fog computing development.