Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing (2022) 13:4681–4703

https://doi.org/10.1007/s12652-021-03515-z

ORIGINAL RESEARCH

Cloud‑based virtualization environment for IoT‑based WSN: solutions,

approaches and challenges
Nasr Almurisi1 · Srinivasulu Tadisetty1

Received: 9 December 2020 / Accepted: 9 September 2021 / Published online: 26 March 2022
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2022

Abstract
Internet of Things (IoT) is an ever-growing technology that enables advanced communication among millions of various
devices to provide ubiquitous services without human intervention. The potential growth of electronic devices in sensing
systems has led to the realization of IoT paradigm where applications depend on sensors to interact with the environment
and collect data in a real-time scenario. Nowadays, smart applications require fast data acquisition, parallel processing,
and dynamic resource sharing. Unfortunately, these requirements can not be supported efficiently with traditional Wireless
Sensor Networks (WSN) due to the deficiency of computing resources and the lack of resource-sharing. Therefore, it is
not recommended to develop innovative applications based on these constrained devices without further enhancement and
improvement. Hence, this article explores a coeffective solution based on Cloud Computing and Virtualization Techniques
to address these challenges. Cloud computing provides efficient computing resources and huge storage space, while the
virtualization technique allows resources to be virtualized and shared between various applications. Integrating IoT-WSN
with the Cloud-based Virtualization Environment will eliminate the drawbacks and limitations of conventional networks and
facilitate the development of novel applications in a more flexible way. Furthermore, this article reviews the recent trends
in IoT-WSN, virtualization techniques, and cloud computing. Also, we present the integration process of sensor networks
with Cloud-based Virtualization and propose a new general architecture view for the Sensor-Cloud paradigm, and discuss
its key elements, basic principles, lifecycle operation, and outline its advantages and disadvantages. Finally, we review the
state-of-the-art, present the major challenges, and suggest future work directions.

Keywords IoT · WSN · Virtualization techniques · Cloud computing · Fog computing · Sensor-cloud · Cloud-based
virtualization environment

1 Introduction In general, the sensor nodes are self-organized, dynami-

cally configured, wirelessly communicated in short-range,
The significant advance in microelectronic-based systems and collaboratively grouped to form a network topology
and wireless communication technology has facilitated (Carlos-Mancilla et al. 2016). Usually, Wireless Sensor
the development of low-energy and low-cost smart sensor Network (WSN) contains various numbers of heterogene-
devices that are dedicated to sense the variety of environ- ous sensor nodes that are randomly deployed in a target area
mental conditions such as humidity, temperature, pressure, to take various measurements which will be converted to
pollutants, sound, vibration, motions, and organize collected useful information for decision making (Singh et al. 2018).
data at a central location for further processing and analyz- However, in recent years these tiny devices have been
ing (Akyildiz et al. 2002). implemented in real-life applications like environment moni-
toring applications (Lazarescu 2013), health care applica-
* Nasr Almurisi tions (KK et al. 2021; Chen and Liu 2010), military applica-
[email protected] tions (Bokareva et al. 2006), smart home applications (Alaa
Srinivasulu Tadisetty et al. 2017).
[email protected] With the rapid growth in communication technology,
sensor network has been envisioned as a key component of
1
ECE Department, College of Engineering and Technology, emerging Internet of Things (IoT) technology (Abdul-Qawy
Kakatiya University, Warangal, India

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4682 N. Almurisi, S. Tadisetty

and Srinivasulu 2018). Several heterogeneous sensors have professionals to contribute in addressing the upcoming chal-
been adopted in IoT systems for measuring temperature, lenges. Besides these opportunities, many benefits can be
humidity, sound, light, etc. Today, IoT paradigm is an inno- accomplished by this integration such as enhance the per-
vative technology that provides intelligent communication formance of sensing systems, supporting numerous applica-
between autonomous devices and ordinary physical objects tions, and maximize service provisioning profits. Therefore,
(Javed et al. 2020). Substantially, IoT technology has ena- this article discusses this novel solution that is based on pre-
bled various devices to integrate and cooperate automati- vious proceedings findings and derived from two main tech-
cally with each other in such a way that allows them to pro- nologies (Cloud computing and Virtualization technique) in
vide ubiquitous services (Ferraris et al. 2020). optimal seeking to improve the overall performance of IoT-
Despite the fact that sensing objects play a vital role in IoT based constrained networks. Furthermore, highlighting the
technology, It still faces several limitations such as energy fundamentals concepts of the WSN, cloud computing and
consumption problem, less storage space, insufficient pro- virtualization techniques will aim to understand how these
cessor power, inefficient data management scheme and fewer technologies can benefit each other. Nevertheless, we present
resources sharing. These constraints restrict the development a common architecture view for Sensor-Cloud and present
of innovative applications and intelligent systems. More spe- its key elements, basic principles, and list its advantages and
cifically Machine Learning and Deep Learning applications disadvantages. As well as the state-of-the-arts that recently
that demand powerful processing units like GPU and large proposed in this context are described in-depth detail and
storage (some time in Gigabyte and Terabyte). outlined their major objectives and challenges. Addition-
In IoT paradigm, it is not recommended to implement ally, the new open boundaries and future directions are also
these constrained sensor devices directly without resolving discussed in this article.
their limitations to meet the challenges of modern applica- The organization of the paper is as follows, Sect. 2 pre-
tions. One of the significant challenges in these restricted sents a motivation example for implementing Cloud-based
networks is that once they are deployed, they will be Virtualization technology to improve the performance of
bounded with an application which makes them domain- existing networks and allow sharing of resources among
specific, task-oriented, and support that application only. multiple applications. Section 3 presents the Cloud-based
When a new application needs to run on the same network, Virtualization solution and provides a brief description of
it required to redeploy and reconfigure the underline net- related technologies relationship. Section 4 presents a review
work to support the newly deployed application which in for WSN. Section 5 discusses the virtualization techniques
turn increases resources management overhead. and its importance for WSN. Section 6 highlights the fun-
In conventional WSN, it is complex to share the physical damental details of cloud computing and the integration
sensors among distinct applications at the same time since of IoT-WSN with Cloud-based Virtualization. Section 7
sensor nodes inherently resource-constraints (low processor presents the Sensor-Cloud approach and its key elements.
speed, storage space, and bandwidth range, etc). Nowadays, Section 8 presents the architecture of Sensor-Cloud and
IoT-based applications demand real-time data acquisition, its three layers. Section 9 discusses the basic principle of
fast processing, and efficient system management as well Sensor-Cloud, configuration of virtual sensors, and its life-
as virtualized and shared computing resources. Therefore, cycle. Section 10 outlines the advantages and disadvantages
it’s imperative to involve efficient technologies with high of Sensor-Cloud. Section 11 presents the state-of-the-art in
capabilities to address these challenges and provide innova- Sensor-Cloud context and the main challenges that need to
tive solutions and approaches to improve and optimize IoT be resolved. Section 12, we discuss future directions and the
performance. new opportunities provided from this approach. Finally, we
Cloud computing and virtualization techniques are the conclude in Sect. 13.
candidate technologies to face design issues of IoT devel-
opment. Unlike traditional IT (Information Technology)
resources, cloud computing has powerful processing units 2 Motivation
and large storage which are available on-demand to various
users using virtualization techniques. We believe that merg- The rapid evolution of small connected devices has led to
ing these two technologies can be a comprehensive solution different pervasive services and new ubiquitous comput-
for many large-scale constrained networks. ing trends (Minoli 2013). IoT-WSN has been considered
Here, the efficient solution is to integrating IoT-WSN with as a key enabler technology for interacting with the physi-
Cloud-based Virtualization approach to overcome certain cal environment and collect raw data that can be converted
limitations and drawbacks of IoT networks. into meaningful information (Ahmed and Gregory 2011a).
Moreover, this integration will open a new research The expectation of more than 25 billion sensors and smart
domain and attract the attention of researchers and things will be utilized in the IoT systems by the year 2020

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Cloud‑based virtualization environment for IoT‑based WSN: solutions, approaches and… 4683

(Mahdavinejad et al. 2017) and 43 billion by the year 2023 virtualization techniques are the best two technologies to
(McK 2021). Recently, sensor networks have been further fulfill the growing demands of IoT applications and pro-
enhanced and improved to be used in a wide scope of appli- vide large-scale infrastructure to amalgamate multiple sen-
cations, that demand efficient and effective data commu- sor networks and allow applications to share the deployed
nication, which cannot be accomplished with conventional resources.
sensing systems (Huang et al. 2014; Gubbi et al. 2013). In terms of energy optimization, Cloud-based virtualiza-
Consider the example of overlapping geographical area tion environment forces offloading complex computation
applications such as a big city (Bonafini et al. 2019; Talari tasks from resource-constrained networks to highly efficient
et al. 2017; Mitton et al. 2012a), where multiple private sen- resources (usually cloud computation resources) which in
sor networks from different providers are scattered around turn have a great impact in reducing sensors’ operation and
all over the city. Every sensor network is only serving its thereby increase their lifetime. Moreover, to avoid drain off
own provider’s application and that application manages the energy of sensor nodes during serving multiple applica-
and controls its own physical sensors. Mostly the applica- tions, Cloud-based virtualization will create a Virtual Sensor
tion requires only a set of nodes to complete the task while (Also known as software image or copy) of the actual physi-
other nodes remain idle and can not serve other applica- cal sensor in the cloud platform and assigned this virtual
tions and thereby a great waste of resources is contemplated. sensor to the application. This virtual sensor will run as a
Moreover, the energy of physical sensors will be consumed part of cloud resources and does not need any extra power
even if the sensor nodes are not serving any application. usage from the underline physical sensor. This means that
Suppose that a new application needs to use the deployed from one physical sensor we can configure multiple virtual
sensor networks to perform some tasks, one way to fulfill sensors and these virtual sensors will be dedicated to serve
this requirement is to redeploy and reconfigure the deployed one or more applications. Now physical sensors in the field
sensor networks in order to support the newly running appli- need to perform the task once and handling applications will
cation which in turn increases the complexity and manage- be managed by virtual sensors at the cloud level. In another
ment cost. From this scenario, we summarize a number of word, using this solution, applications will not be permitted
motivation requirements: to run directly on the physical sensors.

• First motivation requirement: How multiple applica-

tions can coexist on the same deployed sensor network 3 Cloud‑based virtualization solution
and run their tasks in parallel?.
• Second motivation requirement: How multiple physi- Before we go further with our discussion, it is preferable to
cal sensors belonging to two or more sensor networks highlight the background concept of related technologies
located at different geographical areas, can effectively involved in our research study and present the relationship
collaborate and serve one or more applications at the between them, and how the proposed solution came into the
same time?. picture. The conceptual description for IoT-WSN, Virtual-
• Third motivation requirement: How one application ization Techniques, and Cloud Computing is given in the
can use multiple physical sensors from different sensor upcoming Sects. (4, 5, 6) but this section presents how these
networks to execute its tasks?. technologies are connected? and what is the benefits after
• Fourth motivation requirement: How stakeholders of they are merged?. First, Cloud computing will benefit from
sensor networks can maximize their profits while provi- the virtualization techniques by virtualizing its hardware,
sioning sensory data to various clients?. allow access sharing and efficiently utilize the resources.
• Fifth motivation requirement: How sensor network Therefore, cloud computing will maximize its profits and
providers can increase the lifetime of networks in spite serve large numbers of diverse applications. Implementing
that they are serving several applications?. virtualization techniques in cloud computing will emerge in
a new context called Cloud-based Virtualization Environ-
The main Motivation challenge from these scenarios is the ments that is equivalent to the massive growing demands of
ability to keep the sensor networks up and running while IoT applications.
serving various applications taking into consideration maxi- Second, IoT sensing systems will exploit the great oppor-
mizing the service provisioning profits and increasing the tunity provided by cloud computing and the gain achieved
network lifetime to a possible extension. from virtualization techniques to leverage its performance
The best approach to meet these motivating requirements and widespread to various geographical areas. Table 1
is to integrate sensor networks with Cloud-based Virtualiza- describes the merits and demerits of related technologies
tion paradigm where it can be effectively virtualized and as notable by Rashid and Chaturvedi (2019) and Kocakulak
shared among several applications. Cloud computing and and Butun (2017). Furthermore, integrating sensor networks

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4684 N. Almurisi, S. Tadisetty

Table 1  Merits and demerit of related technologies

Technology Merit Demerit

Virtualization Tech- Utilizes resources efficiently and virtualizes them to allow Requires high efficient computing capability to perform
nique resources sharing among several applications the tasks
Cloud Computing Provides on-demand access to a powerful computing To reach resources, it requires high speed Internet con-
resources pool over the Internet in pay-as-you-go model nectivity and security mechanism against malicious
attacks
IoT-based WSN Facilitates the interaction with cyber-physical systems Low processing capabilities, insufficient storage and
and extract data that can be converted to meaningful operates on limited energy supply
information

with Cloud-based virtualization environment will lead to a Generally, WSN is composed of four main parts: Sensor
new ubiquitous computing service known as Sensor-Cloud nodes, monitoring area, base station, and user applications
Virtualization Paradigm. However, the Configured Solution (Othman and Shazali 2012). Sensors will collect informa-
is depicted in Fig. 1. Where this configuration is based on tion from monitoring terrain and apply initial preprocessing
the previous proceedings conclusions. and aggregation and then forward the data to the base sta-
tion where the processing and analyzing techniques can be
applied.
4 Wireless sensor network
4.1 Sensing and sensor
The definition of Wireless Sensor Network is “a self-con-
figured and infrastructure-less wireless networks to monitor Sensing refers to the technique of collecting information
physical or environmental conditions, such as temperature, from the physical environment along with events occurrence
sound, vibration, pressure, motion or pollutants and to coop- (such as increases in temperature, humidity, or pressure)
eratively pass their data through the network to a main loca- while the object that performs the sensing process is known
tion or sink where the data can be observed and analyzed” as a sensor (Middya et al. 2017). Technically, a sensor is
(Mainwaring et al. 2002; Wang et al. 2019b). an electronic device that transfer physical conditions into

Fig. 1  Configured solution based on previous proceeding conclusions

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Cloud‑based virtualization environment for IoT‑based WSN: solutions, approaches and… 4685

a digital signal that can be processed and measured. Basi- with confined energy which often can not be changed or
cally, the term transducer refers to the device that transforms recharged (Castiglione et al. 2015). The energy consump-
energy from one form into another form, similar to the trans- tion mainly relies on the operation of a sensor node and the
ducer, a sensor can be defined as a transducer that converts type of applications it serving, suppose in a battlefield sce-
the physical energy into electrical energy and passes it in the nario the sensors need to operate only for a few days while
form of a signal into a processing subsystem or controller in other applications the sensors may require to operate for
(Razzaque and Dobson 2014). a year or more.
Usually, the sensor signal is processed with various oper- Actually, the sensor node will consume energy based
ations before it can be used such as applying an amplification on their operation modes: Active, Sleep, or Idle mode
or signal attenuation to adjust the signal magnitude to fit the (Fahmy 2016; Sendra et al. 2011). Mainly, the maximum
range of analog-to-digital conversion. For signal condition- amount of energy is consumed in active mode due to the
ing, filters can be applied to remove noise within specific various operations such as data transmission and recep-
frequency ranges (Swami et al. 2007). After the process of tion by the communication unit which caused the high-
signal conditioning, the analog signal will be converted into est energy dissipation (Kaur and Sood 2017; Cotuk et al.
a digital signal that can be stored and visualized. 2014), whereas the sensing unit and processing unit will
cause the least amount of energy consumption (Anastasi
4.2 Sensor node architecture et al. 2009). Moreover, communication distance and tar-
geting events will vary in energy utilization (Alskaif et al.
Generally, the node’s architecture is composed of four main 2015). Sleep state dissipates quite low energy expending
subsystems (Healy et al. 2008): Sensing Subsystem (Analog- since the sensor node does not perform any task as well as
to-Digital Converter), Processing Subsystem (Digital Signal the communication unit is switched off. In the Idle mode,
Processor), Communicating Subsystem (Signal Transmis- the node is suspended and set into a listening state, waiting
sion), and Power Supply Subsystem which can be a battery for arriving signal from neighboring nodes which leads to
power or solar energy (Healy et al. 2008). Figure 2 depicts more energy wastage almost 50%-100% of total energy
the subcomponents of the sensor node. There are secondary consumption (Lai et al. 2010). However, some additional
elements of these four major subsystems such as transducers, sources of energy dissipation are identified by Airehrour
filters, amplifiers, and comparators. The sensing unit per- et al. (2016), such as channel errors, packet loss, colli-
forms a sensing mechanism for the monitored environment. sion, and computation overheads. Therefore, utilizing the
The processing unit is responsible for the manipulation and energy of sensor nodes wisely is extremely required.
aggregation of various data tasks, whereas, the communica- In the state-of-the-art, there are several various energy-
tion unit handles data delivery to the base stations, and all saving techniques proposed specifically for IoT battery-
units will be supplied with energy by the power unit. powered devices. A novel classification of these con-
servation techniques can be found in Abdul-Qawy et al.
4.3 Energy dissipation (2020), Pantazis and Vergados (2007) and Abdelaal and
Theel (2014).
Sensor networks possess many properties of distributed
systems and thereby it subjected to various challenges and
design issues that impact the efficiency of IoT applications.
One of the most tremendous challenges is energy con- 5 Virtualization technique
sumption. In fact, most of the sensor nodes are powered
Virtualization refers to the process of abstracting the
physical resources and hides the design complexity of
the underlying hardware and demonstrates the important
details which the developers require to deploy their appli-
cation (Loveland et al. 2008). Virtualization decouples the
tight coupling that binds the networks with their applica-
tions at the time of deployment. Thus virtualization tech-
nique provides an isolation mechanism between physical
resources and applications running on the top, therefore,
the physical resources do not know which application
will serve, and application run regardless of the platform
dependency of the physical infrastructure.
Fig. 2  Sensor node’s architecturel

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5.1 Virtualization benefits 2. Network-Level Virtualization

3. Data-Level Virtualization
The virtualization technique supports applications with an
abstract level by encapsulating the underlying hardware Hardware-Level virtualization is the abstraction of comput-
and resources (Huang et al. 2006). However, virtualization ing resources from the software running on the top (Sahoo
techniques provide the following benefits for realizing cloud et al. 2010). This implies that a virtual machine can be cre-
computing (Mergen et al. 2006): ated as a new version of a real computer with an operat-
ing system such as Windows VMware Workstation (VMw
1. Isolation Mechanism. The Supervisor manages the 2010) and Oracle VM VirtualBox (Vir 2013). The purpose
protection between virtual machines (VMs) and appli- is to decouple applications from the underlying resources
cations. The privileges will be granted to users within and enabling resource sharing between different applica-
the same virtual machines without compromising the tions. Network-Level virtualization can be achieved by cre-
isolation integrity. ating virtual nodes through connecting virtual links over the
2. Service Provisioning. Virtualization allows the provi- physical network (Chowdhury and Boutaba 2010) such as
sioning of highly capable and customized resources such Virtual Private Network (VPN) (Khanvilkar and Khokhar
as dedicated operating systems, database storage, run- 2004). The aim is to permit many virtual networks to cohabit
time applications, etc. virtualization enables multiple on a single physical network. Basically, a virtual network is
views over the same physical hardware. also known as a subset of the physical network where each
3. Flexible Management. Initiating, migration, or shut- subset is serving different applications. Data-Level virtual-
down services at run-time environments can be custom- ization refers to the process of managing, abstracting, and
ized in a flexible way, depending on the requirements of encapsulating data in such a way that it grants applications’
the underlying hardware providers. users an access into the stored data to retrieve, query, and
4. Applications Cohabitation. The virtualization tech- manipulate the data without knowing the technical details
nique allows legacy applications to coexist with recent of data source, physical location, or how it was formatted
new applications at run-time environments. (Mousa and Shiratuddin 2015). Data Virtualization improves
5. Parallel Processing. Running multiple tasks at the same management flexibility, scalability, efficient resource utiliza-
time such as testing and debugging several applications tion, and energy efficiency (Bari et al. 2013).
on a single physical host. However, one obvious common relationship between
these levels is that the virtualization technique replicates
the original resources (hardware, networks, or data) and pro-
vides a virtual view to users. Therefore, the implementation
5.2 Virtualization levels of virtualization techniques at which level mainly depends
on application requirements and specifications.
Virtualization is an emerging research area and many However, the virtualization levels characteristics are sum-
approaches and solutions have been proposed in this context. marized in table 2.
However, these solutions implementing virtualization tech-
niques at different levels of abstraction (maybe on Hardware 5.3 Virtualization in WSN
level, Network level, or Data Level). Therefore, it is impera-
tive to classify these levels to eliminate the ambiguity in how Virtualization technique is a promising solution to revoke
virtualization techniques can be implemented. the drawback of resource sharing where it allows more mul-
Mainly virtualization technique has three levels. tiple applications to co-exist and run their tasks concurrently
on the same network. The importance of WSN virtualization
1. Hardware-Level Virtualization has arisen mainly due to the fact that some sensor nodes

Table 2  Characteristics of virtualization levels

Virtualization level Virtualization method Virtualization tools

Hardware level Isolates running applications from the underline hardware using encap- Operating system and Virtual machine
sulation mechanism
Network level Can be achieved by forming of virtual networks above the physical Cluster-based formation and Overlay-based
networks using virtual nodes and virtual links formation
Data level Grants applications an access to data in such away that they can retrieve Docker container and Database partitioning
and manipulate data without any changes to the original resource

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Cloud‑based virtualization environment for IoT‑based WSN: solutions, approaches and… 4687

remain idle and not performing any tasks. Virtualization is a modern concept known as Cloud Computing. With this
a significant technique that exploits the waste resources in service model, servers, CPU/GPU, storage, networks, etc,
sensor networks effectively. The virtualization technique is are delivered as public utilities (deliver computing resources
considered as a key of the Future Internet (Mosharaf Kabir as a service rather than a product) to various users through
Chowdhury and Boutaba 2009), therefore, it is imperative the Internet in Pay-as-you-go fashion (Prasad et al. 2013).
to implement this technique in sensor networks to meet the In addition to these resources, the cloud provides various
growing demands of IoT technology. type of software services like APIs (Application Program
However, virtualization in sensor networks has been sur- Interfaces) and developing tools in order to support users
veyed in the academic research domain. For example, Mer- for developing innovative real-time applications in a fast and
entitis et al. (2013) had considered virtualization as a key efficient manner (Venters and Whitley 2012). Furthermore,
element to share information in the IoT paradigm. Aslam cloud computing will ensure user authentication and data
et al. (2012) mentioned that the same WSN infrastructure integrity in a shared environment (Megouache et al. 2020).
can be virtualized to supports multiple applications concur- The essential purpose of providing such APIs is to facilitate
rently in the cloud and provide services such as Network as applications deployment in the cloud platform (Jula et al.
a Service (NaaS) to various users. Cao et al. (2016) claimed 2014). However, cloud computing has been developed over
that IoT platforms can be shared among multiple applica- various technologies such as “Parallel Computing”, “Dis-
tions in smart cities. Ramdhany and Coulson (2013) used tributed Computing”, “Grid Computing”, and the evolution
the WSN virtualization technique in a smart city to utilize of virtualization technique (Bharti and Goudar 2012).
the deployed infrastructure effectively. Abdelwahab et al.
(2014) imagined virtualization in WSN as a significant 6.1 Definition and concepts
innovation to make large-scale sensor infrastructure that is
utilized to fulfill effective resource usage. Khan et al. (2013) The context of the Cloud is back to the early 1960s when
proposed architecture for WSN virtualization based on the John McCarthy imagined that computing resources will
multi-layers: physical layer, a virtual layer, and an overlay be delivered to the community as a utility service (Parkh-
layer to allows the deployed network to be shared by differ- ill 1966). In the 1990s, the word Cloud was used to define
ent applications. several concepts, for example, portray large ATM networks
However, there are prominent surveys that attempted to (Vaidya 2016).
classify the proposed solutions for virtualization in IoT sen- Also, Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt in 2006, applied this
sor networks and they can be notable by Islam et al. (2012), term to portray the business paradigm of delivering com-
Khan et al. (2016) and Almurisi and Tadisetty (2020). puting services over the internet (Alsaeed and Saleh 2015).
Table 3, summarizes the advantages of the virtualization Since then, the terminology Cloud Computing has been
technique over the conventional WSN. applied basically as a business expression to state many vari-
ous contexts (Zhang et al. 2010). However, many experts
from business marketing and academic research seeking to
6 Cloud computing explain the definition of Cloud Computing and what are the
special characteristics it provides.
The recent advancement in IT and Internet availability and A valuable definition from Buyya et al. (2009): “Cloud
scalability has made computing resources more efficiently is a parallel and distributed computing system consisting of
powerful and ubiquitously available to the public community a collection of inter-connected and virtualized computers
in the form of on-demand services (Paul and Ghose 2012). that are dynamically provisioned and presented as one or
This technological orientation has led to the emergence of more unified computing resources based on Service-Level

Table 3  Virtualization sensor network vs traditional sensor network

S.No Virtual Sensor Network Traditional Sensor Network

1 Allows sharing of resource Prevents resource sharing

2 Provides abstraction level for physical resources The physical resources are exposed to users
3 Decouples applications from networks Binds applications with networks at time of deployment
4 Executes multiple tasks in parallel The tasks are executed one by one
5 Accumulates several applications on the same WSN Only one application is running on single WSN
6 Supports IoT applications Can’t Support IoT applications
7 Utilizes resources efficiently Waste of resources

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Agreements (SLA) established through negotiation between reducing the transmission delay and response time by relo-
the service provider and consumers”. cating the resources closer to the IoT devices along with
Also, Vaquero et al. (2009), mentioned that “Clouds enhancing the quality of service and supporting the mobility
are a large pool of easily usable and accessible virtualized of IoT nodes.
resources (such as hardware, development platforms, and/ However, IEEE 1934 Standard defined fog computing
or services). These resources can be dynamically reconfig- as “a system-level horizontal architecture that distributes
ured to adjust to a variable load (scale), allowing also for resources and services of computing, storage, control, and
an optimum resource utilization. This pool of resources is networking anywhere along the cloud-to-things continuum.
typically exploited by a pay-per-use model in which guar- It supports industry verticals and application domains, ena-
antees are offered by the Infrastructure Provider by means bles services and applications to be distributed closer to the
of customized Service Level Agreements”. data-producing sources, and extends from the things over
Moreover, national universities also attempted to define the network edges through the cloud and across multiple
cloud computing, for example, National Institute of Stand- protocol layers”.
ards and Technology (NIST) (NIS 2012), defined cloud as Mainly, Fog computing possesses several characteristics
“a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand such as:
network access to a shared pool of configurable computing
resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and • Low latency: Fog nodes are located nearby the IoT
services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with devices which helps in reducing the latency of the request
minimal management effort or service provider interaction”. processing.
NIST has stated that cloud computing has Five Essen- • Wide geographical distribution: The fog layer includes a
tial Characteristics (“On-demand Self-service, Broad Net- set of heterogeneous fog nodes distributed in large geo-
work Access, Resource Pooling, Rapid Elasticity, Measured graphical areas to meet a variety of applications demands
Service”), Three Service Models (“Software as a Service” and services requirements that require scattered deploy-
(SaaS), “Platform as a Service” (PaaS), “Infrastructure as ment.
a Service” (IaaS)), and Four Deployment Models (“Private • Heterogeneity: The fog layer includes different types of
Cloud, Community Cloud, Public Cloud, Hybrid Cloud”). edge devices that have different resource capabilities.
University of California Berkeley (Armbrust et al. 2009) • Support of mobility: It is necessary for many fog applica-
has outlined the cloud computing characteristics as “The tions to guarantee direct communication with the mobile
illusion of infinite computing resources, the elimination of devices through using standard protocols.
an up-front commitment by cloud users, and the ability to • Real-time interactions: Fog computing supports the
pay for use as needed”. real-time interaction between the fog devices to provide
In general terms, Sotomayor et al. (2009) indicated that adequate services for time-sensitive applications.
“cloud is more often used to refer to the IT resources that • Scalability: Fog computing offers the distributed process-
deployed on an Infrastructure as a Service”. ing and resources that are required to process the huge
However, since there are several numbers of defini- amount of data generated by IoT devices.
tions for cloud computing, many characteristics appear
to be mutual between the most outstanding definitions 6.3 Integrating IoT‑WSN with cloud‑based
mentioned earlier, that the cloud should have as stated by virtualization
William Voorsluys and Buyya (2011), and they are: “Pay-
per-use (no ongoing commitment, utility prices); Elastic From a technical perspective, sensor network has been con-
capacity and the illusion of infinite resources; Self-service sidered as a key element for the evolution of the IoT para-
interface; and Resources that are abstracted or virtualized”. digm where it enables interaction with the physical world
and extracts sensing data (Ahmed and Gregory 2011b).
6.2 Fog computing In spite the advantages provided by the sensing system to
various popular applications (e.g, smart city, smart home,
Fog computing is a new services model proposed by Cisco healthcare system, environment monitoring, object detec-
in 2012 (Nath et al. 2018). It has been considered as an tion, target tracking, military applications and etc), the mas-
extension of cloud computing technology with limited sive data gathered by sensor nodes, require adequate stor-
resources. Fog nodes located geographically nearer to IoT age, dynamic computing resources, efficient processing and
devices. Generally, Fog computing shifts the cloud services analyzing techniques and need to be shared and served to
operation partially to the edge nodes (Esposito et al. 2017). information-hungry applications. Moreover, this huge data
Thus, helps in the rapid deployment of IoT applications (Ali is not utilized effectively because of the deficiency in experi-
et al. 2021). One of the most advantages of fog computing is ence, money, and time with which the data is implied to be

13
Cloud‑based virtualization environment for IoT‑based WSN: solutions, approaches and… 4689

perfectly processed and saved for future usage (Wang et al. virtual sensors will be removed by the cloud and a command
2012). will be sent to the physical sensors provider to cease data
In this context, involving technology with high per- transmission and the sensor goes to sleep.
formance and powerful computing resources is essential. However, the process of integration WSN with the
Cloud-based Virtualization infrastructure is a well promis- cloud has envisioned the emerging of Sensor-Cloud para-
ing solution to support constrained networks and distribute digm that provides a flexible amalgamation of WSNs,
systems (Shah et al. 2013). This diversion of data derived dynamic resources management, and cost-effective service
from sensor networks into sufficient resources for process- provisioning.
ing, sharing, and storing will exploit the opportunity being
promoted from this coeffective solution.
The sequence diagram in Fig. 3 illustrates the integration 7 Sensor‑cloud approach
process between IoT-WSN and the Cloud-based Virtualiza-
tion approach. From the figure, both users (applications user The contemporary improvement in IoT technology has led
and sensors owner ) need to register in the cloud database to connecting millions of tiny devices and physical objects
before any real interaction. The cloud will enroll a user with together all around the world, so they can communicate
their application then the physical sensors are registered and automatically with each other without human assistance
a service template is created and provided to the end-user. (Al-Fuqaha et al. 2015; Borgia 2014). Today infrastruc-
Once the end-user sends a request to the cloud specifying tures such as smart homes, smart cities, smart grid, smart
some virtual sensors to perform the task, the virtual sensors transportation, smart water systems, etc., allow an intelligent
will be initiated and assigned to the end-users application. and smooth interconnection, controlling our daily activities
When the required service is completed, the end-user will and making life easier (Carlos-Mancilla et al. 2016; Abdul-
release the virtual sensors, and thereby the instance of that Qawy and Srinivasulu 2017). This plays significant roles

Fig. 3  Sequence diagram of

integrating IoT-WSN with IoT-WSN Cloud-based Virtualization Application’s User
cloud-based virtualization
approach Send request for registration

Activate sensor node User Registry

Register sensor node User account is created

(name, id, location) (Username, Password)

Insert sensor information

Provide service template
Acknowledgment
Sensor is registered successfully Browse services
Request for virtual sensor

Collect sensing data Initialize virtual sensor

Assign virtual sensor
Forward sensing data

Update sensing data Utilize virtual sensor

Update virtual sensor

Release virtual sensor

Update physical sensor status
Delete virtual sensor

Destroy virtual sensor

Cease data transmission

Go to sleep

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4690 N. Almurisi, S. Tadisetty

in different aspects of the technical life and enables many and Srinivasulu 2020). It also allows integrating multi-
applications such as fire detection, building security, inven- ple sensor networks from different service providers and
tory control, border surveillance, patient tracking, traffic transmits collected data to the cloud infrastructure (Wang
monitoring, etc (Maksimovic 2018). The ubiquitous nature et al. 2019a). Sensor-Cloud virtualizes physical sensors
of the sensing devices, the easier deployment, and the flex- in the cloud resources and creates an emulation template
ible communication increase their popularity and capability known as Virtual Sensors which can be provisioned and
to integrate with the other new technologies (Abdul-Qawy de-provisioned automatically by the users as per applica-
and Srinivasulu 2018). The early estimation said that the tions’ requirements.
continuous growth of the sensor market reaches a rate of However, the state-of-the-art has derived novel defi-
43.1% per year with a total of US$3.795 by 2017 (Ind 2014). nitions for the Sensor-Cloud. A notable definition from
However, the main task of sensor networks is to moni- IntelliSys’s (Int 2016; Tan 2010), “Sensor-Cloud is an
tor physical phenomena in our environments (such as tem- infrastructure that allows truly pervasive computation
perature, pressure, heat, light, etc.) and transmit the related using sensors as an interface between physical and cyber
information to the monitoring systems which, then, build worlds, the data-compute clusters as the cyber backbone
an information database for reliable data management, and and the internet as the communication medium”.
a right decision-making (Carlos-Mancilla et al. 2016; Gubbi Mic (2017) has defined Sensor-Cloud as “A unique sen-
et al. 2013). In traditional WSNs, the networking models sor data storage, visualization and remote management
have some restrictions that limit them to be used in today’s platform that leverages powerful cloud computing tech-
innovative applications. Each WSN is assigned to a single nologies to provide excellent data scalability, rapid visu-
application, in which the user/owner is the only responsible alization, and user-programmable analysis. It is originally
for network deletion, resource allocations, programming, designed to support long-term deployments of MicroStrain
and maintenance (Sen et al. 2016). wireless sensors. Sensor-Cloud now supports any web-
Nowadays, with the generational shifts in the IoT-based connected third-party device, sensor, or sensor network
WSNs, connected machines and sensors can make autono- through a simple OpenData API”.
mous decisions. Using smart sensors and artificial intelli- Generally, Sensor-Cloud paradigm is an extensive infra-
gence, a machine can inform another machine when a certain structure derived from two main technologies IoT-WSN
event occurs, so the appropriate action can be decided inde- and Cloud-based Virtualization.
pendently, and the owner, then, can be notified (Boyes et al. However, the key elements of Sensor-Cloud paradigm
2018; IEC 2014). The relation between the ownership and are depicted in Fig. 4.
the use of collected data has been a recent emerging issue The Sensor-Cloud key elements are described as follow:
in such cyber-physical systems, where this data is gathered
from heterogeneous sensors located at different places, con- • Web interface: This module allows applications’ users to
solidated, processed, and analyzed for further use. register in the cloud and send request for virtual sensors
Sensor-Cloud is a new paradigm of WSNs that addresses through a web browser.
this problem and decouples the owners of the physical sen- • User registry: Enrolling the users along with their appli-
sors from the network users. Many sensor networks that cations in the cloud database.
may be owned by different entities, and deployed in differ-
ent geographical areas, are connected together by the means
of the cloud, allowing them to interoperate with each other
simultaneously for multiple applications (Arjun et al. 2015).
This has led to emerging what is called SenaS (Sensing as
a Service) and opened new data business opportunities. The
physical constrained resources are efficiently virtualized in
the cloud and then can be offered as a service to many clients
through Internet, over different geographical areas, based on
their applications’ demands.

7.1 Sensor‑cloud key elements

As the number of physical sensors is potentially increased

in the IoT system, managing sensor data became compli-
cated and tedious. Sensor-Cloud is an effective solution
to accumulate physical sensors on IT resources (Almurisi Fig. 4  Key elements of sensor-cloud paradigm

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Cloud‑based virtualization environment for IoT‑based WSN: solutions, approaches and… 4691

• Physical sensors registration: Store the attributes of the 8 Sensor‑cloud architecture

sensor devices (such as sensor Id, resource capacity, loca-
tion, IP address) at the cloud database. Figure 5 depicted the proposed general view of the Sensor-
• Routing management: A method to decide the path for Cloud architecture, which includes three main components:
data transmission from the physical layer to the cloud Physical Sensors Infrastructure, Cloud and Virtualization
layer. Infrastructure, User and their Applications.
• Resource management: This module is used to man-
age resources such as resources allocation and 8.1 Physical infrastructure
deallocation,tasks scheduling based on their priority, and
planning budget and cost. The Physical layer of Sensor-Cloud consists of hetero-
• Resource discovery: Searching for capable sensors that geneous sensor nodes that are deployed in a widespread
meet the requirements of users’ applications. area. Typically, this layer contains several types of sensor
• Storage space: The storage capacity available at the cloud nodes (such as camera sensor, light sensor, motion sensor,
to save the sensing data. sound sensor, etc.) that dedicated to measure the conditions
• Security and privacy: Ensure privacy protection of the changes and control the surrounding environment (Bose
Sensor-Cloud networks against any breach. et al. 2015). Data is collected from the working phenomenon
• Virtualization management: Responsible for controlling by the sensing unit, then passed to the processing unit which
the process of creating, monitoring, and maintenance the handles various data manipulation and computing tasks. It
virtual sensors. then transmitted through the communication unit to the base
• Service template: A catalog contains a list of available stations. This can be either directly in a single-hop routing,
services that are ready to serve hungry applications. or through several intermediate nodes in a multi-hop rout-
• Service management: Control and monitor the provision- ing model. The base station/gateway receives data from all
ing of various services. the sensor nodes in the networks, performs additional tasks
such as aggregation and compression, and then transmits
data directly to the cloud.
However, the physical sensors may be owned by dif-
ferent owners, where they have to maintain and keep their

Fig. 5  The proposed architecture of sensor-cloud

13
4692 N. Almurisi, S. Tadisetty

sensing networks in good and working conditions in order release the resources based on the application requirements
to perfectly provide their services through the cloud’s SaaS, and destroy the template when they are no longer required.
according to a registration agreement. A mutual trust rela-
tionship should be ensured between the sensors’ owners
and the cloud service provider, thus, getting accurate data 9 Sensor‑cloud principles
readings in an exchange with an appropriate compensation
(Mitton et al. 2012b). Sensor-Cloud provides virtual sensors as a service automati-
cally to various users on-demand. These requested virtual
sensors are considered as a piece of IT resources (such as
8.2 Cloud infrastucture
memory storage, CPU, software, etc.) (Dash et al. 2012).
This section highlights the basic principle of Sensor-Cloud
The cloud platform is considered as a shared pool with high-
infrastructure.
efficient computing resources that are available to many cli-
ents as public utility services (IaaS, SaaS, or PaaS) without
9.1 Virtual sensors
any concern about where the resources are located or the
other details (Alamri et al. 2013; Yuriyama and Kushida
In Cloud-based sensing networks, the virtual sensors are a
2010). This helps in off-loading most of the complex tasks
software image of the actual sensors. A virtual sensor can
from low-performance devices to the cloud which provides
get its data from the underlying physical sensors which are
real-time data processing and analysis using powerful algo-
compatible to execute multiple complex tasks at the same
rithms and scalable distributed models. In Sensor-Cloud
time, therefore, a customized view of the sensing networks
paradigm, the data gathered by the sensor nodes is received,
can be provided to different users, and multiple virtual sen-
stored, and managed by management modules in the cloud.
sor networks (VSNs) can be run at the same time. The idea
The data then offered as high-level services using virtualiza-
is to provide a number of services with different metrics
tion schemes by which the users from different geographical
(e.g., application need, Quality of Service, data security,
areas can access the shared data based on their application
etc.) based on the end-user demands (Zahariadis et al. 2013).
requirements, without concerning about the actual physical
By this, a flexible and enhanced management, and efficient
sensors are located. Using standard techniques, the cloud
utilization of the physical resources can be achieved, while
service provider enables the users to request the needed vir-
maintaining a minimum deployment cost, and interoperabil-
tual sensors automatically through a user interface. They
ity amongst the connected devices.
can control and make use of all the monitoring functions
Generally, sensor virtualization can be classified into
of the given virtual sensors, which can be a combination of
three main categories as presented by Khan et al. (2016)
functions of different types of physical sensors in different
and Rea et al. (2013), which are:
WSNs.
Generally, the cloud infrastructure consists of several
1. Node-level virtualization: Enables creating independ-
modules, that together perform the total functionality of the
ent virtual sensors (VS). Every single virtual sensor can
Sensor-Cloud and provide services to various user applica-
be used as a multi-purpose node and utilized by many
tions. This includes resource-registry, resource-management
applications (simultaneously at the same time or sequen-
& control, data storage, virtualization, security, etc.
tially one-by-one use).
2. Network-level virtualization: Enables a dynamic creat-
8.3 User application interface ing of virtual sensor networks (VSNs). Each VSN con-
sists of a number of sensor nodes which may belong to
Also known as the application layer, and this layer consists different WSNs (a subset of a WSNs), and usually is
of various users who are registered with one or more appli- assigned to a single application at a time. Thus, multiple
cations in the Sensor-Cloud database and start using sensing applications can form their own VSNs form nodes of
as s services or virtual sensors to serve their applications. different underlying WSN infrastructures that are not
Registered users can request virtual sensors to execute the utilized by others at the same time.
tasks from the available templates provided by service pro- 3. Data level virtualization: Enables different users to
viders. The users have a choice to prepare their own template access the sensory data collected by various sensors, but
from virtual sensors or by adjusting the current service tem- they can not do any change to the physical infrastructure
plates and allow other parties to share their own templates. parameters.
Every user is managing and controlling their virtual sen-
sors and also can observe the condition of their virtual sen- However, many virtualization approaches have been intro-
sors through the website. However, the user can lease and duced lately addressing various implementation issues

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Cloud‑based virtualization environment for IoT‑based WSN: solutions, approaches and… 4693

according to the aforementioned categorization. Three types are allowed to make use of the virtual sensor in this group
of solutions are identified: node-level, network-level, and and control them freely as if they are their own physical sen-
hybrid virtualization solutions (Khan et al. 2016). In the sors (Yuriyama and Kushida 2010).
same context, Madria et al. (2014) have implemented the
concepts of virtual sensors in four different configurations,
9.2 Virtual sensors group
which are:
There are several heterogeneous physical sensors distributed
1. One-to-many: Each physical sensor is mapped to mul-
in a large monitoring area and virtual sensors can be cre-
tiple virtual sensors, where its data is shared among all
ated from one or more physical sensors and then a group
the corresponding virtual sensors that mapped to it.
of virtual sensors can be formed from these virtual sensors.
2. Many-to-one: Several physical sensors deployed in dif-
The overall representation of the virtual sensors group is
ferent places to monitor the same event, where the col-
depicted in Fig. 7. Users can construct virtual sensor groups
lected data sent to a single virtual sensor assigned to this
and freely control the virtual sensors within the group as if
phenomenon which provides a view of the aggregated
they control their own sensors. Thus, they can initiate sen-
data to the respective users.
sors reading, check the status, and regulate the frequency
3. Many-to-many: Combines both the one-to-many and
for data collection.
many-to-one configurations, where a physical sensor can
be mapped to many virtual sensors, and multiple distrib-
uted sensors can gather data for a single virtual sensor. 9.3 Sensor‑cloud life cycle
4. Derived configurations: Different types of physical
sensors can be mapped to a single of multiple virtual Usually, the service model cycle will pass through several
sensors (it is a hybrid of the other three configurations, phases starting from the down layer (Physical Sensors) to the
where the virtual and physical sensors can be of different top layer (End-User Application). The lifecycle operation
types). This can be utilized to monitor complex phe- will be processed at the cloud layer as depicted in Fig. 8.
nomenon or to virtualize a sensor that can’t be deployed However, the life-cycle phases for the Sensor-Cloud para-
physically. digm are illustrated as follow:

However, Fig. 6 describes these four scenarios for creating 1. Routing management: In this phase, Sensor-Cloud must
virtual sensors and virtual sensor groups. The end-users can ensure that the functionalities of IoT networks are up and
request a virtual sensor group as per their need and then they running and the routing scheme is specified.

Fig. 6  Different configurations of virtual sensors

13
4694 N. Almurisi, S. Tadisetty

Fig. 7  Formation of virtual sensors group

Fig. 8  Phases of sensor-cloud life cycle

2. Physical sensors registration: Enroll capable sensors that 4. Creating service templates: In this phase, service
are willing to serve the end-user applications. instances are prepared and provided to the end-user.
3. Preparing IT resources: Reserve resources for service 5. Responding to user request: The user will send a request
operation such as processor, storage, memory, and net- for service instances via web services.
works.

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Cloud‑based virtualization environment for IoT‑based WSN: solutions, approaches and… 4695

6. Initialize virtual sensors: After listening to the user 5. Dynamic Services Provisioning. In Sensor- Cloud para-
specification, virtual sensors will be created as per the digm, Users are allowed to access their virtual sensors
application demand. from anywhere and any time and also provide data to
7. Utilizing virtual sensors: Users start using the service third parties on-demand basis (Le et al. 2010).
instances and controlling the virtual sensors. 6. Flexible Management. Sensor-Cloud provides efficient
8. Release virtual sensors: At the time of compilation of flexibility of resources management to the users com-
task operation, the application’s user will free service pared to traditional computing methods and thereby
instances. supports multiple applications without management
9. Destroy virtual sensors: At the end of service provision- overhead (Tan 2010).
ing virtual sensors that were assigned to the end-user 7. Resource Optimization. The Sensor-Cloud platform
will be removed from the cloud database. allows the sharing of resources among several appli-
cations which in turn leads to efficient utilization of
resources (Lee et al. 2010). By integrating sensors with
the cloud the gradual cost of resources can be reduced
10 Sensor‑cloud advantages and a higher gain of services is achieved.
8. Security. Sensor-Cloud provides a better security
Sensor-Cloud is an encouraging solution for limited mechanism to underline physical resources by hiding
resources networks due to several reasons such as mobility, the implementation details and configuration, therefore,
reliability, scalability, flexibility, real-time, and so forth. In users can access data without concern where the physi-
this section, we present several benefits and advantages of cal sensors are located (Nguyen and Huh 2011).
the Sensor-Cloud paradigm.
Despite these advantages, the Sensor-Cloud paradigm is
1. Efficient Analysis. The massive data accumulated from still facing some drawbacks such as:
several sensor networks required different kinds of ana-
lyzing techniques by users through scalable processing • Internet connectivity: Sensor-Cloud requires continuous
power provisioning (RS and J 2011). interconnection between IoT networks and the cloud any
2. Scalability. Sensor-Cloud allows the traditional sensor interruption for the Internet will result in data transmis-
networks to scale on a very large infrastructure due to sion blockage (Biswas et al. 2010).
the wide routing of the cloud architecture (Alexe 2011). • Prior IT resources preparation: Resources should be
3. Collaboration. Sensor data can be shared among several reserved in advance for IoT data which makes applica-
applications on the cloud through the collaboration of tions waiting in a queue to use those resources (Yuriyama
physical sensor networks. et al. 2011).
4. Visualization. Sensor-Cloud infrastructure expands API • Denial of Service Attack (DSA): Sensor-Cloud is prone
to be used for visualizing the diagrams of the stored and to various attack that may occurred from the physical
retrieved data from several sensor nodes. Using these layer due to unreliable devices (Gul and Hussain 2011).
visualization tools, users will be able to predict future
status and trends and plan accordingly (Doukas and However, in table 4, we present the advantages and disad-
Maglogiannis 2011). vantages of the Sensor-Cloud paradigm.

Table 4  Advantages and disadvantages sensor-cloud paradigm

S. No Pros of sensor-cloud Cons of sensor-cloud

1 Provides IT resources and sensors as service The IT resources and sensors need to be prepared in advanced
2 Allows efficient resources sharing between multiple applications Can not provide accurate data with direct sharing of physical
sensors
3 Sensor data is available to various users online through the internet A continuous connectivity between users and Sensor-Cloud is
extremely required
4 Provides isolation mechanism between physical sensors and end- Sensor-Cloud is vulnerable to distributed intrusion attacks such as
user’s applications Distribute Denial of Service (DDOS).
5 Users can request and control the service instances on demands If the physical sensor is failed the services instance will be inter-
rupted
6 Status of physical sensors are tracked by the sensor network Provid- Users can’t inspect the update status of the physical sensors
ers.

13
4696 N. Almurisi, S. Tadisetty

11 State‑of‑the‑arts data-collection at the physical sensor nodes to the final

data-delivery to the related users. Analytical and experi-
To realize Sensor-Cloud paradigm, and to provide a flex- mental outcomes indicate that the proposed architecture
ible and efficient platform for virtualization schemes, many meets the designing goals and requirements, where the
research studies have been carried out, providing various mobile users can get the data of interest in a secure and
Sensor-Cloud architecture and virtualization frameworks. In fast manner. This proposed framework is shown in Fig. 9.
this section, we present some of the proposed architectures Taleb et al. (2017) presented a multi-layer architecture
available in the state-of-the-arts, discuss their major char- for energy-efficient cloud-based WSNs, using Named Data
acteristics and summarize their scope as shown in table 5. Networking (NDN). Their proposed architecture has three
layers: Physical Layer, Virtualization Layer, and Application
Layer, where each layer is further divided into subcompo-
11.1 Existing works nents (Physical Sensors & Gateway, IT resources & Virtual
Sensors and User-Application & Interface). The authors
Hassan et al. (2009) proposed a framework for Sensor- experimented with two energy-aware routing protocols using
Cloud to build a community-centric model and allow inter- the presented architecture in order to find out the appropri-
connecting of people, sensors, and IoT objects. ate energy-efficient protocol that can be used in the case of
The authors introduced Content-based Pub-Sub Model integrating WSN with the could computing. The outcome
to help in integrating the physical sensor networks with the from this study is that combining EQ-AODV (Energy and
cloud applications and delivering sensor data to the corre- QoS Ad-Hoc On-Demand Distance Vector) and ES-WSN
sponding end-users. They also developed Statistical Group (Energy Efficient by Switching between roles of nodes in
Index Matching algorithm (SGIM) in order to match the WSNs) protocols will be an effective solution to increase
published events with appropriate subscribers. A compar- network lifetime while integrating WSN with the cloud.
ison to other related solutions has been done based on a Atif and Shah (2017) discussed Optimal Sensor-Cloud
healthcare scenario to show the superiority of their proposed Architecture (OptiSeC) to provide several requirements
architecture in terms of scalability and efficiency. such as security, efficiency, data management, and improve
Kim et al. (2014) proposed Agriculture Sensor-Cloud performance. The authors provided a literature review of
Infrastructure (ASCI) that composed of three layers: Physi- the existing architecture for sensor cloud and classify them
cal sensor layer, Virtual Sensor Layer, Service Cloud Layer. into a number of main categories based on these four main
The goal of this framework is to process massive data, requirements as considered in OptiSeC. They also provided
provide various types of agricultural services, and allow a future estimation of the data growth in their presented
rapid and reliable packet delivery in WSNs. The authors architecture till 2022.
also introduced H-SMSR protocol as an enhanced version Zhang et al. (2017) introduced a fog-based layer for
of SMSR, which is an integration of Hierarchical Source Sensor-Cloud. This new solution aims to enhance security,
Routing (HSR) and Aggregation Gradient Routing (AGR). and move the heavy data-related operations to the fog layer.
This protocol can help in reducing configuration time and
end-to-end delay and ensures higher levels of packet deliv-
ery and transmission reliability in massive networks while
considering different levels of transmission priority.
They claimed with their simulation results that this
solution is more applicable in large-scale sensor networks
with respect to other solutions.
Zhu et al. (2016) proposed a data-processing framework
for mobile Sensor-Cloud. The introduced architecture aims
to meet the requirements of speed, security, and reliability
in data transmission from Sensor-Cloud to mobile users. The
authors claimed that their solution can improve the network
lifetime and security, and minimize the requirements of the
traffic-load, transmission bandwidth, and data storage. More-
over, it is able to reduce storage and processing overhead in
the cloud and estimate the data traffic for future trends.
They provided a detailed description of their framework
including the steps from data-request issued by users and
Fig. 9  Data processing framework for mobile sensor-cloud

13
 Table 5  A summarized view of the reviewed sensor-cloud approaches
Authors and reference Proposed architecture Scope of the architecture

Hassan et al. (2009) A Sensor-Cloud framework, that uses content-based pub-sub model and Statisti- Virtual communities and web-based social networks to provide community-centric
cal Group Index Matching (SGIM) algorithm, to link the published events with applications by connecting people, objects, sensors, and software together
related customers
Kim et al. (2014) An Agriculture Sensor-Cloud Infrastructure (ASCI), consisting of three layers: Enabling a reliable and fast packet delivery, a less configuration time, a higher ratio
physical, virtual, and service layers, and introducing a new hierarchical protocol of packet delivery, a reduced end-to-end transmission delay, and various levels of
called H-SMSR that integrate HSR and AGR protocols priority
Zhu et al. (2016) A data-processing framework for integrating WSN and mobile cloud computing, Meeting the requirements of security, speed, and reliability for transmitting data
to help in extending network lifespan and reducing the requirements of storage, from WSN-Cloud to the mobile users, as well as estimating the traffic of sensory
traffic load, and data transmission bandwidth data in the future
Taleb et al. (2017) A multi-layer architecture for Sensor-Cloud, using the concept of named data Improving energy-efficiency, where some energy-aware routing protocols (EQ-
networking (NDN), and consisting of three layers: physical, virtualization, and AODV and ES-WSN) have been considered for a comparative study
application layers
Cloud‑based virtualization environment for IoT‑based WSN: solutions, approaches and…

Atif and Shah (2017) An Optimal Sensor-Cloud Architecture (OptiSeC), that addresses four main Sen- Meeting the four OptiSeC characteristics for any proposed architecture as a base for
sor-Cloud requirements: efficiency, security, performance, and data management proving robustness, scalability, and effectiveness
Zhang et al. (2017) A fog-based hierarchical trust mechanism, adopting a multi-cluster-heads struc- Enhancing the security level and moving the complex granular data processing,
ture, that composed of three levels: data collection, event-based reaction, and analysis tasks, and heavy load to the cloud layer
data analysis levels
Reyes et al. (2017) A new architecture for Sensor-Cloud of heterogeneous WSNs, based on SOC Modularity of design to achieve efficient management of heterogeneous WSNs data,
(Service-Oriented Computing) and virtualization, utilizing the concept of Queue meet scalability & QoS requirements, and ensure functional and logical separation
Message-Oriented Middleware (MOM) of the architecture components

13
4697
4698 N. Almurisi, S. Tadisetty

The authors built on the work proposed in Ho et al. (2012) enon, identifying, addressing, and naming these tiny
by Ho and Shih, to provide an improvement by adopting devices are becoming a major challenge. Additionally,
a multi-cluster-heads structure in order to ensure conveni- creating virtual sensors and serving multiple applica-
ent intra-nodes management and to help the sensor nodes tions will add an extra management cost.
in transferring data to the peer layer and the upper layer. • Physical sensors management: Since physical sensors
The proposed solution is provided in three levels: Data col- having shortage capabilitiest and exclusively managed
lection level, Event-based reaction level, and Data analysis and control by their own provider’s applications, there-
level; accordingly, the fog layer contains three main serv- fore, sharing those physical sensors with other applica-
ers: Sensor database center to save the collected data to tions becoming a big challenge. To address this chal-
be used in the higher-level implementation, Event control lenge, cloud computing needs to behalf of the sensor
database center to run some judgments to events received management and enhances the performance of physical
from WSNs, and Service providing database center to con- sensors.
trol monitoring operations on the service parameters and • Resource exhaustion: Serving variant applications
enables various services to CSPs (Cloud Service Providers). continuously may lead to attrition of cloud computing
Simulation experiments have been conducted to show that resources and thereby lower the QoS. This challenge
this solution can provide trust states of network and nodes, can be overcome through a proper resource allocation
save energy, detect hidden attacks, and reduce the recovering algorithm that can maintain the load balance between
delay of misjudgment nodes. resources.
Reyes et al. (2017) introduced a new architecture for • Task Scheduling: Every resource has different capabili-
Sensor-Cloud based on Service-Oriented Computing (SOC) ties (memory, bandwidth, processor speed, etc) there-
and sensor virtualization, in order to improve data manage- fore assigning the task to the right device is another
ment efficiency in heterogeneous WSNs and maintain QoS challenge. In a Sensor-Cloud paradigm, it is important
as well as higher levels of scalability. The proposed model to identify which device is suitable to execute the task
contains four layers: Physical Layer, Virtualization Layer, to avoid processing delay.
Service Layer, and Application Layer. The authors utilize the • Heterogeneity: Sensor-Cloud allows accumulation of
concepts of Queue Message-Oriented Middleware (MOM) multiple sensor nodes belonging to different providers
to aggregate and standardize data from various sensors and on cloud infrastructure where every node differ from
cloud, store & process it, and make it shareable through each other in network configurations, supporting dif-
W3C standard interface. They considered OpenStack in their ferent types of routing protocols, and having various
implementation and evaluate the proposed solution in terms operating systems, therefore, facilitating communica-
of response time using different data collection and traffic tions between them and managing such high level of
load scenarios. heterogeneity is a tremendous challenge.
• Dynamic networks formation: Building virtual net-
11.2 Challenges works at the cloud level from the underline substrate
networks through virtual links is also a superb chal-
Sensor-Cloud Virtualization approach is a recent trend in lenge. The main idea here is to allow dynamic grouping
which the already existed infrastructure can be utilized to of virtual sensors to form a Virtual Sensor Network
serve many more users. This has gained major attention (VSN) from one or more physical networks and auto-
in the past few years, attracting researchers and software mate the provisioning of VSNs service to many appli-
designers. However, in this section, we summarize some of cations.
the tremendous challenges in this orientation study. • Energy depletion: Since the physical layer of Sensor-
Cloud operates based on battery-powered devices, the
• Architecture Layers: In the state-of-the-arts, there are need for developing efficient algorithms to use their
various architectures were proposed for the Sensor-Cloud power wisely is extremely required. Delivering data
paradigm where some of the authors presented three lay- from the sensors field to the cloud platform will cause
ers architecture, and others designed four layers archi- a huge amount of energy consumption unless if there is
tecture. Unfortunately, these architectures are complex a novel energy scheme to reduce power wastage during
structures and difficult to manage and the layers are not data transmission.
flexible to match IoT communication standards. Moreo- • Security and privacy: In this technology trend, security
ver, the interoperability of various types of resources is is a major concern. It is always required to provide a
lack. security mechanism against any breach that may influ-
• Identification of physical sensors: As the number of ence data flow between sensor networks and the cloud.
sensors is potentially increased in the sensing phenom- Moreover, ensuring the confidentiality of sensor network

13
Cloud‑based virtualization environment for IoT‑based WSN: solutions, approaches and… 4699

providers and maintaining a safer network functionality tor the patient status and forward the medical data to the
is a big challenge in the Sensor-Cloud environment. cloud where efficient analyzing techniques can be applied
to generate a medical report that can be useful for doctors
to recommend a better treatment plan.
12 Future directions • Another future work derived from this approach is the
need for an energy-efficient scheme that can minimize
Cloud-based virtualization techniques open new bounda- the energy consumption of physical sensors while
ries and opportunities for academic research and industrial transmitting data to the cloud infrastructure.
communities. Researchers will seek to address the upcom- • The energy harvesting technology has a great influ-
ing challenges that arise due to merging these technologies ence in increasing the network lifetime, therefore, it
while industrial engineers will upgrade their business and is imperative to study the impact of this technique in
develop innovative applications based on this opportunity. In maximizing the Sensor-Cloud network operations.
this article, we discuss some of the future works and related • Resource allocation still occupying to top challenge
technologies that can be advantageous. in managing cloud resources hence, proposing a novel
algorithm for resource allocation in Sensor-Cloud that
• Fog is an extension of cloud computing that provides can map the right device to applications in order utilize
real-time interactions. Fog computing will shift comput- resources wisely is required.
ing tasks from the cloud resources to the edge devices • Furthermore, a case-study to validate the efficiency of
that are located nearby IoT networks in order to reduce Sensor-Cloud when a new technology is adopted (such
processing delay and enhance response time. One pos- as Fog computing, AI, Big Data, etc) and provide a
sible future work is to investigate the impact of fog tech- valid benchmark and detail analysis after completion
nology in decreasing response time and provide real-time of the experiment.
task processing for sensitive applications in Cloud-based
virtualization approach.
• Since Sensor-Cloud allows amalgamation of multiple
sensor networks in the cloud platform, massive data will 13 Conclusion
be gathered and stored in the cloud database systems,
hence Big Data is coming into the picture (Castiglione Integrating IoT-WSN with Cloud-based Virtualization
et al. 2018). Substantially, Big Data demands efficient approach is an innovative solution for many issues facing
analysis techniques and effective algorithms to extract IoT sensing systems, such as data sharing, data processing,
information from huge data mainly MapReduce and scalability, heterogeneity, storage, etc. This amalgamation
Hadoop can be followed in this approach. In the future, has led to the emerging of a new concept called Sensor-
it is imperative to apply the Big Data concept to deal with Cloud Virtualization paradigm, where real time data col-
sensory data in the Sensor-Cloud paradigm. lection, processing, analysis, and control can be performed
• Recently Artificial Intelligence (Machine Learning and effectively. Many heterogeneous sensors in different net-
Deep Learning algorithms) has been adopted in many works can be connected together, virtualized, and offered
technologies and applications to perform tasks that need to many users simultaneously, based on their demands.
human intelligence. It is advisable to implement AI In this paper, we discussed this integration trend, high-
methods in Sensor-Cloud approach to build smart appli- lighted its importance, and presented a general architecture
cations and analysis the future status of service provi- view. We have discussed the key components of Sensor-
sioning performance. Cloud, describing their main functions and characteristics.
• As the number of sensor nodes is increased in the Sensor- Furthermore, we reviewed the existing works proposed
Cloud fields, a security breach is also increased. Here, it especially for Sensor-Cloud, and discussed their focus and
is mandatory to propose a security mechanism that can scope. The challenges and the open boundaries for integra-
distinguish between fake sensors and authorized sensors tion of IoT sensor network with Cloud-based virtualization
as well as identify the failure of sensor nodes. are also illustrated in this paper. Our future work is to
• The healthcare system is one of the most critical applica- study the impact of Fog computing in reducing process-
tions of the Sensor-Cloud paradigm due to several rea- ing time and enhance the performance of Sensor-Cloud
sons. One of these reasons is that the world now facing paradigm.
a large health depression caused by the COVID-19 pan-
demic. Therefore, a new design for the healthcare system Acknowledgements I’m very much thankful to Kakatiya University
for providing all the facilities and support to carry out this research.
is urgent and require involving modern technologies such
as integrating IoT objects with medical devices to moni-

13
4700 N. Almurisi, S. Tadisetty

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017
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