A Case Study on the Deployment of a Tactile Internet Application in a Hybrid Cloud, Edge, and Mobile Ad Hoc Cloud Environment

Document Type

Article

Source of Publication

IEEE Systems Journal

Publication Date

1-1-2021

Abstract

The tactile Internet is the next step after the Internet of Things (IoT). It enables the steering and control of virtual and real objects through the Internet and requires a very low round trip latency. This article is devoted to a case study on the deployment of a tactile Internet application in a hybrid cloud, edge, and mobile ad hoc cloud environment. We deploy a remote phobia-treatment application as a set of components. Remote phobia treatment allows phobia patients to have therapy sessions under the guidance of an expert therapist located remotely, with patients and therapist sharing the same virtual reality (VR) environment. A three-layer architecture (cloud, edge, and mobile ad hoc cloud) is proposed for the deployment. A prototype is built with Microsoft Azure at the cloud layer, laptops at the edge layer, and smartphones at the mobile ad hoc cloud layer. End-users are equipped with an HTC VIVE headset for VR rendering and Gloveone gloves for haptic sensations rendering. Extensive performance measurements are made by varying the component deployment patterns as well as the distance between the therapist and patient. Our results demonstrate clearly that the addition of mobile ad hoc cloud to the edge and cloud does bring added value in terms of latency reduction when deploying tactile Internet applications.

ISSN

1932-8184

Disciplines

Computer Engineering

Keywords

Cloud computing, Cloud computing, Computer architecture, Edge computing, edge computing, Medical treatment, mobile ad hoc clouds, Mobile handsets, remote phobia treatment, Tactile Internet, tactile Internet, virtual reality (VR), Wireless sensor networks

Scopus ID

85105864078

Indexed in Scopus

yes

Open Access

no

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