E2R-F2N: Energy-efficient retailing using a femtolet-based fog network

Energy-efficient smart retail system design is a challenging research area. In this paper, we propose an automated retail system using a femtolet-based fog network. A femtolet is an indoor base station providing computation and storage. Femtolets in our system work as indoor base stations and maintain databases of the products located in their respective coverage areas. The femtolets switch to active or idle mode according to the user's presence in its coverage. A smart trolley is proposed for our retailing system, which guides the user to the particular product type selected by the user. The user, after entering the shopping mall, carries the smart trolley. The customer selects and purchases products using this trolley. On the basis of product purchasing, the respective databases maintained inside the femtolets are updated. An Android application for the proposed retailing is developed. We compare the power consumption and delay of the proposed retail system with the existing retail system. Simulation analyses illustrate that the proposed approach reduces power by approximately 89% and 94%, respectively, in comparison to the localcloudserver-based and remotecloudserver-based retail systems. Thus, we refer to the proposed system as a green retail system. The performance of the proposed system through experimental analysis is also evaluated.