Fog Nodes Deployment Based on Space–Time Characteristics in Smart Factory

The emergence of fog computing has improved the performance and efficiency of intelligent manufacturing. In a fog computing platform, fog nodes can provide the distributed and proximity resources for the tasks related to intelligent manufacturing. Due to the heterogeneous characteristics of the fog nodes and the space-time characteristics of intelligent manufacturing, the effective deployment of the fog nodes is a precondition for the fog computing implementation and it is also a key to provide high-performance services with the fog computing platform. However, traditional deployment strategies cannot satisfy the performance requirements of intelligent manufacturing systems. In this article, the problem of the fog nodes deployment is studied and a fog nodes deployment strategy based on the space-time characteristics (TSBP) is proposed. A fog nodes deployment system model is set up and the objective function of the fog nodes deployment is built up, in which the optimization goal is to minimize the computing response time and realize the load balancing of the fog nodes. In addition, the discrete differential evolution algorithm is applied to search the optimal fog nodes deployment solution. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed TSBP strategy is verified using a candy packaging intelligent production line prototype platform.