Fog-Cloud Based Platform for Utilization of Resources Using Load Balancing Technique

Fog based computing concept is used in smart grid (SG) to reduce the load on the cloud. However, fog covers the small geographical area by storing data temporarily and send furnished data to the cloud for long-term storage. In this paper, a fog and cloud base platform integrated is proposed for the effective management of energy in the smart buildings. A request generated from a cluster of building at demand side end is to be managed by Fog. For this purpose six fogs are considered for three different regions including Europe, Africa an North America. Moreover, each cluster is connected to fog, comprises of the multiple number of buildings. Each cluster contains thirty buildings and these buildings consisted 10 homes with multiple smart appliances. To fulfill the energy demand of consumer, Microgrids (MGs) are used through fog. These MGs are placed nearby the buildings. For effective energy utilization in smart buildings, the load on fog and cloud is managed by load balancing techniques using Virtual Machines (VMs). Different algorithms are used, such as Throttled, Round Robin (RR) and First Fit (FF) for load balancing techniques. These techniques are compared for closest data center service broker policy. This service broker policy is used for best fog selection. Although using the proposed policy, three load balancing algorithms are used to compare the result among them. The results showed that proposed policy outperforms cost wise.