Power line communication (PLC) technology has created a niche use in the Internet of Things (IoT) by offering flexible and reliable connection among power-driven IoT devices/sensors over existing wired networks. In IoT over PLC networks, massive real-time data generated by the ever-growing connected devices will eventually pose an overwhelming burden on the IoT cloud, which in turn severely degrades the network performance. To cope with these issues, edge computing (EC) has emerged as a complement to cloud computing, aiming at offloading a portion of computing in the cloud to the network edges closer to the IoT devices. However, confronting a practical scenario that some electrical devices cannot communicate with wireless and mobile networks directly, existing EC paradigms may not be directly applied to IoT over PLC networks. In this paper, we propose a novel EC-IoT over PLC paradigm to reduce the transmission latency while migrating a portion of computing from the cloud to the edges. First, we develop a distributed EC platform to serve terminal users (TUs) in different IoT systems with various IoT services. Second, we put forth a cache-enabled scheme to store the popular contents from the cloud and edge sensors to reduce redundant data transmissions between TUs and the cloud. Finally, our experimental results demonstrate that the proposed EC-IoT over PLC network can significantly reduce energy consumption and transmission latency.

中文翻译：

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电力线通信网络物联网的边缘计算范式


电力线通信 (PLC) 技术通过现有有线网络在电力驱动的物联网设备/传感器之间提供灵活可靠的连接，从而在物联网 (IoT) 中创造了一个利基用途。在基于PLC网络的物联网中，不断增长的连接设备产生的海量实时数据最终会给物联网云带来巨大的负担，进而严重降低网络性能。为了解决这些问题，边缘计算（EC）作为云计算的补充而出现，旨在将云中的部分计算卸载到更靠近物联网设备的网络边缘。然而，面对一些电子设备无法直接与无线和移动网络通信的实际场景，现有的EC范式可能无法直接应用于基于PLC网络的物联网。在本文中，我们提出了一种新颖的基于 PLC 的 EC-IoT 范例，以减少传输延迟，同时将部分计算从云端迁移到边缘。首先，我们开发了一个分布式EC平台，为不同物联网系统中的终端用户（TU）提供各种物联网服务。其次，我们提出了一种支持缓存的方案来存储来自云端和边缘传感器的流行内容，以减少TU和云端之间的冗余数据传输。最后，我们的实验结果表明，所提出的基于 PLC 网络的 EC-IoT 可以显着降低能耗和传输延迟。