5.c) Write a short note on offloading considerations.
Answer:
Offloading considerations
There are a few offloading parameters which need to be considered while deciding upon the offloading type to choose. These considerations typically arise from the nature of the IoT application, and the hardware being used to interact with the application. Some of these parameters are as follows.
- Bandwidth:The maximum amount of data that can be simultaneously transmitted over the network between two points is the bandwidth of that network. The bandwidth of a wired or wireless network is also considered to be its data-carrying capacity and often used to describe the data rate of that network.
- Latency:It is the time delay incurred between the start and completion of an operation. In the present context, latency can be due to the network (network latency) or the processor (processing latency). In either case, latency arises due to the physical limitations of the infrastructure, which is associated with an operation. The operation can be data transfer over a network or processing of a data at a processor.
- Criticality:It defines the importance of a task being pursued by an IoT application. The more critical a task is, the lesser latency is expected from the IoT solution. For example, detection of fires using an IoT solution has higher criticality than detection of agricultural field parameters. The former requires a response time in the tune of milliseconds, whereas the latter can be addressed within hours or even days.
- Resources: It signifies the actual capabilities of an offload location. These capabilities may be the processing power, the suite of analytical algorithms, and others. For example, it is futile and wasteful to allocate processing resources reserved for realtime multimedia processing (which are highly energy-intensive and can process and analyze huge volumes of data in a short duration) to scalar data (which can be addressed using nominal resources without wasting much energy).
- Data volume:The amount of data generated by a source or sources that can be simultaneously handled by the offload location is referred to as its data volume handling capacity. Typically, for large and dense IoT deployments, the offload location should be robust enough to address the processing issues related to massive data volumes.