A Decision Model for Cyber-foraging Systems

Cyber-foraging is a technique to enable mobile devices to extend their computing power and storage by offloading computation or data to more powerful servers located in the cloud or in single-hop proximity. While there is a large amount of research in this area, the reality is that there are not many deployed, operational cyber-foraging systems. As these systems become more prevalent due to their proven benefits, combined with the emergence of micro data centers and edge clouds, a need will arise for guidance on their architecture and development. To provide this guidance, we present a decision model based on a mapping of functional and non-functional requirements for cyber-foraging systems to a set of architectural tactics. The decision model was validated by developers to obtain an expert opinion on its correctness and usefulness for guiding the architecture, design, and evolution of cyber-foraging systems that meet their intended functional and non-functional requirements, while understanding the effects of decisions.