FOG COMPUTING AND CLOUD COMPUTING: ARCHITECTURE, KEY TECHNOLOGIES, APPLICATIONS AND SECURITY CHALLENGES

Today, there exist intercommunication and interconnection among numerous devices as a result of the emergence of Internet of Things (IoT) that has caused unprecedented production of significant data, referred to as data explosion. Over the years, cloud computing has played a critical part in processing and storing such data. However, cloud computing still experiences various challenges such as limitation of network bandwidth and real-time increasing demands that cannot be overcome solely by cloud computing technology. Hence, fog computing-a novel computing paradigm emerged as a complement to the solution of cloud computing. Essentially, fog computing enhances the services of the cloud to the edge of the network by ensuring end-users and edge devices communicate, compute, and store data efficiently. Such achievements are achieved by improving security, network bandwidth, mobility, as well as low latency. Thus, the current research paper surveys and summarizes fog computing and cloud computing to depict their architectures, main technologies, applications, as well as related security challenges. Firstly, the paper explores the fog computing architecture in relation to cloud computing architecture before discussing their key technologies such as computing and communication. It goes further to address several applications of the two technologies. Finally, the paper provides related security issues that require further research to enhance technologies.