A power-of-two choices based algorithm for fog computing

The fog computing paradigm brings together storage, com-munication, and computation resources closer to users’ end-devices.Therefore, fog servers are deployed at the edge of the network, offeringlow latency access to users. With the expansion of such fog computingservices, different providers will be able to deploy multiple resourceswithin a restricted geographical proximity.In this paper, we investigate an incentive-based cooperation schemeacross fog providers. We propose a distributed cooperative algorithmamongst fog computing providers where fully collaborative fog nodesare subject to different loads. The proposed algorithm leverages thepower-of-two result and exploits a cooperation probability, namely theprobability that a given provider collaborates by accepting a computationrequest from another provider, as a mean to achieve a fair cooperation.We adopt an analytical approach based on exploiting a simplifiedperformance model to demonstrate numerically that a set of optimalaccepting probabilities exits when the number of server nodes goes toinfinity. This result then drives the design of our distributed algorithm.Second, in our experimental approach, we perform a set of simulationanalysis to verify the validity of the proposed solution when the numberof servers is limited.