Security and Makespan Trade-Off Strategy in Fog-Enabled IoT Networks

Abstract

Fog computing relieves the Internet of Things (IoT) from a heavy burden of workload computation, consequently minimizes workload makespan, and reduces the considerable energy consumption of IoT devices. However, the fog-enabled IoT poses a risk to data security due to the intrinsic open and distributed structure of the fog. Hence, it is imperative to search for an optimal scheduling strategy on fog nodes to minimize workload makespan, while guaranteeing high data security. In this study, we investigate the trade-off between security and makespan and propose a multiobjective optimization model to optimize them simultaneously. To achieve this goal, we design an evolutionary algorithm together with two effective measures to handle large-scale partitionable workloads: a conflict-free multi-installment scheduling (ConfMIS) strategy as well as a security criterion based on Eigenvector centrality measure. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can generate a set of widely spread and uniformly distributed solutions in the decision space. Among these representative solutions, system designers/decision-makers can choose their favorite one based on specific IoT application demands.