Aura: An IoT Based Cloud Infrastructure for Localized Mobile Computation Outsourcing

Many applications require localized computation in order to ensure better performance, security, and lower costs. In recent years, the emergence of Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices has caused a paradigm shift in computing and communication. IoT devices are making our physical environment and infrastructures smarter, bringing pervasive computing to the mainstream. With billions of such devices slated to be deployed in the next five years, we have the opportunity to utilize these devices in converting our physical environment into interactive, smart, and intelligent computing infrastructures. In this paper, we present Aura -- a highly localized IoT based cloud computing model. Aura allows clients to create ad hoc clouds using the IoT and other computing devices in the nearby physical environment, while providing the flexibility of cloud computing. Aura provides localized computation capability from untapped computing resources. Computations done on Aura are highly flexible, giving clients full control to start, stop, migrate, and restart computations in nearby devices as the clients move between different physical locations. To demonstrate the feasibility of Aura, we have ported a lightweight version of MapReduce to run on IoT devices, and evaluated its performance.