A Cloud-Based Traffic Flow Framework for Tactile Internet using SDN and Fog Computing

Abstract

Tactile Internet (TI) is an emerging area of research which is still in its infancy, and facing many issues and challenges. One of the main challenges in TI is to achieve a round trip time (RTT) or latency of 1ms or less. This RTT consists of transmission time, processing time (operator's end), and acknowledgement time (controlled environment end). In this paper, we first present a system framework of the multilevel structure of cloud units incorporating Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Fog Computing (FC) for TI. We then propose an efficient traffic flow framework that can avoid unnecessary processing and waiting times at each cloud units. The SDN and FC approaches are used to control the traffic flow in the system. As FC-empowered edge nodes, fog nodes (FNs) are placed close to the end-user devices, consequently, the communication paths are reduced and minimised RTT is achieved. The system performance is evaluated by iFogSim simulation. Results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed traffic flow framework than edge, cloud, and cellular networks. The findings reported in this paper provide some insights into Tactile Internet that can help network researchers and engineers to contribute further towards developing the next-generation Internet.