SOFT-IoT: Self-Organizing FOG of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) has advanced in different directions, including the development of new architectures, platforms and applications. This multidirectional progress has resulted in the creation of several parallel IoT ecosystems called verticals. Therefore, several approaches have proposed solutions for interoperability of these ecosystems through the delivery of services over virtual infrastructure (Cloud Computing). We introduce the paradigm of Fog of Things (FoT) and propose the design and development of a self-organizing platform called SOFT-IoT: Self-Organizing Fog of Things. SOFT-IoT implements the "Fog Computing" concept introduced by CISCO for the Internet of Things, where part of data processing capacity and service delivery operations are processed locally in "small servers", i.e., close to where data is collected. SOFT-IoT deals with protocols to facilitate the local computing processing and rely in more complex operations running in virtual entities avoiding the traditional approach of centralized cloud computing solutions. In this way, SOFT-IoT enables interoperability of local ecosystems in the fog and also at the cloud level, where other data is stored, processed and complex operations are resolved. In other words, in SOFT-IoT the data processing and delivery of services occurs locally in order to overcome with current infrastructure limitations and data processing alleviating those demands for heavy computational resources that can occur in remote servers, i.e., geographically away from where data is generated.