Volunteer Computing for fog scalability: A systematic literature review

Fog computing (FC) is a scalable and responsive computing paradigm that uses distributed computing resources to provide efficient and localized data processing solutions to industries and businesses. Due to the exponential growth of the Internet of Things (IoT), data processing has evolved from traditional centralized cloud computing to decentralized architectures such as FC. However, due to the distributed nature of the fog network, its implementation presents significant challenges, especially in resource management, due to a number of factors, including the dynamic and unpredictable nature of workloads, energy efficiency considerations, and interoperability concerns. In this paper, we explore the benefits that can be gained and the requirements that are needed to maximize the scalability of FC by using volunteer computing (VC). This paper aims to provide valuable information on the use of volunteer computing as a viable solution to the challenges associated with fog scalability. For this purpose, we identify three requirements that are fundamental to address to ensure the efficient integration of VC in the FC environment to take full advantage of the potential of these idle computing resources before reviewing the existing literature. Five well-known and highly ranked online databases were used to collect and identify state-of-the-art approaches, published between 2015 and 2023, that are relevant to this survey. Based on the analysis of the twelve relevant articles, we identify open issues and potential gaps that need further investigation by synthesizing existing research. Furthermore, we anticipate that this review will inspire researchers and practitioners to explore innovative methods and strategies to overcome the challenges and unlock the full potential of VC in FC environments.