Dynamic Resource Allocation in Fog-Cloud Hybrid Systems Using Multicriteria AHP Techniques

Cloud systems are inefficient in processing delay-sensitive applications due to the WAN latency associated. To augment the processing of cloud services and provide delay-free computation, fog computing is used. The delay sensitivity of the tasks and heterogeneity of the fog-cloud hybrid architecture calls for efficient resource allocation policies. The decision making must be precise and also multiple criteria must be considered while deciding which resources to allocate. In this article, we propose two variants of analytic hierarchy process (AHP)-based resource allocation policies for fog-cloud hybrid systems. The proposed resource allocation policies consider network load, in addition, to the compute load during decision making. The overall aim of the resource allocation policies is to reduce the delay incurred by each task. The allocation policies differ in the way they assign weights to each criterion of optimization. One of the resource allocation policies uses predetermined weights for compute and network while the second method finds the weights dynamically from the overall data. The experimental results show that the proposed approach outperforms existing resource allocation approaches thereby showing the usefulness of AHP-based optimization in fog-cloud hybrid systems.