Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) Applications of Edge and Fog Computing: A Review and Future Directions

Abstract

With rapid technological advancements within the domain of Internet of Things (IoT), strong trends have emerged which indicate rapid growth in the number of smart devices connected to IoT networks and this growth cannot be supported by traditional cloud computing platforms. In response to the high volume of data being transferred over these networks, the edge and fog computing paradigms have emerged. These paradigms are extremely viable frameworks that shift computational and storage resources from the centralized cloud servers to distributed LAN resources and powerful embedded devices at the edge of the network. These computing paradigms, therefore, have the potential to support massive IoT networks of the future and have fueled the advancement of IoT systems within industrial settings, leading to the creation of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). IIoT is revolutionizing industrial processes in a variety of domains. In this chapter, we elaborate on the impact and viability of edge and fog computing paradigms in IIoT through a use-case approach. Finally, we conclude with the future research directions like security and privacy for edge and fog computing in IIoT, relevance of Blockchain for IIoT, programmability and task partitioning, virtualization, etc.