A Strategy-Based Formal Approach for Fog Systems Analysis

Overview & Synopsis

Fog systems are a new emergent technology having a wide range of architectures and pronounced needs making their design complex. Consequently, the design of fog systems is crucial, including service portability and interoperability between the various elements of a system being the most essential aspects of fog computing. This article presents a fog system cross-layer architecture as a first step of such a design to provide a graphical and conceptual description. Then, a BiAgents* (Bigraphical Agents) formal model is defined to provide a rigorous description of physical, virtual, and behavioural aspects of Fog systems. Besides, this formalisation is implemented and executed under a Maude strategy system. The proposed approach is illustrated through a case study: an airport terminal Luggage Inspection System (LIS) while checking the correctness of its relevant properties: the portability of data and their interoperability. The integration of the Maude strategies in the rewriting of Fog system states made it possible to guide the execution of the model and its analysis.