Centralized Micro-Clouds: An infrastructure For Service Distribution In Collaborative Smart Devices

In the current information-driven society, the massive use and impact of communications and mobile devices challenge the design of communication networks. This highlights the emergency of a new Internet structure namely the Internet of Things that refers to the transformation of physical objects to smart objects and their communication. Based on that the communication of such objects will offer an augmented infrastructure that is formed dynamically and on the fly based on transient links among objects. This is the concept behind cloud computing, to provide a computer-based environment where various services are available to be consumed by everyday users, anywhere and at anytime. Our vision encompasses a dynamic micro-cloud environment that is formed from devices that share computational power. This encompasses inter-linked smart objects and smart mobile devices available from a smart environment that can be formed dynamically. The proposed micro-cloud notion will be of apparent significance to maintain the required quality of service in dynamic scenarios such as those found in emergency and disaster situations. To represent such system we are focused on the development of such architecture into a novel simulation toolkit that allows the replication of Internet of Things scenarios. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.