The internet of things (IoT) and cloud computing are two technologies which have recently changed both the academia and industry and impacted our daily lives in different ways. However, despite their impact, both technologies have their shortcomings. Though being cheap and convenient, cloud services consume a huge amount of network bandwidth. Furthermore, the physical distance between data source(s) and the data centre makes delays a frequent problem in cloud computing infrastructures. Fog computing has been proposed as a distributed service computing model that provides a solution to these limitations. It is based on a para-virtualized architecture that fully utilizes the computing functions of terminal devices and the advantages of local proximity processing. This paper proposes a multi-layer IoT-based fog computing model called IoT-FCM, which uses a genetic algorithm for resource allocation between the terminal layer and fog layer and a multi-sink version of the least interference beaconing protocol (LIBP) called least interference multi-sink protocol (LIMP) to enhance the fault-tolerance/robustness and reduce energy consumption of a terminal layer. Simulation results show that compared to the popular max-min and fog-oriented max-min, IoT-FCM performs better by reducing the distance between terminals and fog nodes by at least 38% and reducing energy consumed by an average of 150 KWh while being at par with the other algorithms in terms of delay for high number of tasks.
Keywords: IoT; LIBP; edge computing; energy conservation; fog computing; fog layer; genetic algorithm; multi-sink nodes; resource allocation; routing protocol; terminal layer.