EDGE COMPUTING FOR THE INTERNET OF THINGS
KID Model-Driven Things-Edge-Cloud Computing Paradigm for Traffic Data as a Service
Bowen Du, Runhe Huang, Zhipu Xie, Jianhua Ma, and Weifeng Lv
Abstract
The development of intelligent traffic systems
can benefit from the pervasiveness of IoT tech-
nologies. In recent years, increasing numbers of
devices are connected to the IoT, and new kinds
of heterogeneous data sources have been gen-
erated. This leads to traffic systems that exist in
extended dimensions of data space. Although
cloud computing can provide essential services
that reduce the computational load on IoT devic-
es, it has its limitations: high network bandwidth
consumption, high latency, and high privacy risks.
To alleviate these problems, edge computing
has emerged to reduce the computational load
for achieving TDaaS in a dynamic way. Howev-
er, how to drive all edge servers’ work and meet
data service requirements is still a key issue. To
address this challenge, this article proposes a
novel three-level transparency-of-traffic-data ser-
vice framework, that is, a KID-driven TEC com-
puting paradigm. Its aim is to enable edge servers
to cooperatively work with a cloud server. A case
study is presented to demonstrate the feasibility
of the proposed new computing paradigm with
associated mechanisms. The performance of the
proposed system is also compared to other meth-
ods.
Introduction
With the exponential growth in the types and
quantities of IoT devices such as wireless sen-
sors, smart vehicles, and surveillance cameras, a
large amount and variety of data can be collect-
ed, which is of great benefit in industry and daily
life. The use of these data not only helps optimize
transportation systems, but also supports traffic
data services in a dynamic way. However, to
understand the real-time status of traffic systems,
such as moving patterns, not only the raw data,
but also data mining algorithms are required.
Recently, cloud computing has emerged as a
leading computing paradigm. It supports on-de-
mand access to a large amount of data and
computing resources, which are provided by indi-
viduals and organizations at any time and from
anywhere via the Internet. Traffic data as-a ser-
vice (TDaaS) [1] aims to provide data services
using integrated data and knowledge fused from
different sources for intelligent traffic systems. It
is based on the concept of transparent comput-
ing [2], namely, enabling traffic services without
the need to know how the data are integrated or
how the knowledge has been discovered by data
requesters and data providers [3].
Digital Object Identifier:
10.1109/MNET.2018.1700169 Bowen Du, Zhipu Xie, and Weifeng Lv are with Beihang University; Runhe Huang (corresponding author) and Jianhua Ma are with Hosei University
34 0890-8044/18/$25.00 © 2018 IEEE
However, because it is a centralized process
model, a cloud-only platform has four limitations
for TDaaS:
• Transmitting large amounts of data between
IoT devices and the cloud consumes a large
amount of network bandwidth.
• Providing data services through the Internet
inevitably delays real-time applications.
• Processing huge volumes of data places a
computational load on the cloud.
• Increasing risks of privacy violations [4] occur
when security-sensitive data are exposed on
the Internet.
The emergence of edge computing inspires
a new paradigm for building the relationship
between IoT devices and cloud platforms [5]. Sev-
eral such paradigms, such as mobile edge com-
puting and fog computing, have been presented
in recent years. They mainly optimize cloud com-
puting systems by performing data processing at
the edge of the data network, near the source of
the data, which significantly reduces the volume
of data flows, network bandwidth occupation, and
response time of data services, because IoT devic-
es are accessible to edge servers without passing
data through the Internet [6]. Tran et al. [7] illus-
trated case studies of collaboration between edge
servers. However, they mostly focused on setting
up architectures that combine edge computing
and communication infrastructures, not on data
provision.
To this end, in this article, we propose a
knowledge-information-data (KID)-driven TDaaS
edge computing (TEC) paradigm for TDaaS. The
main idea of TEC is that by utilizing edge com-
puting and providing a distributed computing
environment for applications and service host-
ing, the computational load of a cloud server
is shared, thus removing a major transmission
and computational bottleneck for cloud-only
platforms. Moreover, the risk of privacy leaks
is reduced. The proposed paradigm is similar
to mobile edge computing, a data service net-
work architecture concept that enables cloud
and edge computing at the edge of the data net-
work. However, to enable TEC to work automat-
ically, a knowledge discovery and fusion engine
is needed to enhance the cooperation between
edge and cloud computing. The KID model [8] is
a cognitive engine that can be used for interpret-
ing incoming data, in both service requests and
data provisioning. This enables data flow, infor-
mation assimilation, and even knowledge fusion.
KID consists of three transparent levels for edge
services and cloud servers. There are dynamic
IEEE Network • January/February 2018
steps that make implementation of the three-lev-
Cloud server
el transparent approach feasible, namely, trans- Edge server
parency for data, transparency for models, and TDaaS
E2
transparency for services. That is, the TEC com- Service Global
puting paradigm needs to be able to recognize engine K-store
incoming data, discover insights from data, and
be aware of the task and situation, which can be
Edge server
provided by the KID model. Internet E3
The rest of this article is organized as follows.
The architecture of the TEC computing paradigm
is described, followed by an illustration of the Edge server E1 Local ••• •••
transparency enabled by the KID model. Then a K-store
Knowledge <V1,G1,A1> Edge server
case study of traffic event detection is presented <V4,G4,A4> I-store
En
Information
that shows how the combination of KID and TEC <V5,G5,A5> <V2,G2,A2> D-store
can benefit TDaaS. Finally, a brief conclusion is Information
given. <V6,G6,A6> <V3,G3,A3>
V
V
V
V
Information
KID Driven
V V

TEC Computing Paradigm for TDaaS Data

Data
source Data
Data collecting

TDaaS [1] is an objective-oriented system that source 2 source

transparently integrates heterogeneous multi-
source data and fuses mined features and dis-
covered knowledge for a traffic service. The TEC
paradigm enables part of the computation and
data processing to be distributed from the cloud
to the edge servers, which are closer to the IoT
devices. However, how to effectively and effi-
ciently direct the data processing and balance the
computational resources is still a challenge in the
TEC paradigm. This section briefly describes the
KID-driven TEC computing paradigm for TDaaS,
as shown in Fig. 1.
E nabling Transparent On-Demand Services
In the previous TDaaS architecture, all the data
sources are distributed but have links in the data
center in the cloud.
Upon receiving a service request, the cloud
data center integrates and processes data with
prior knowledge contained in the triple Vocabu-
lary, Graph, Algorithm. Here, Vocabulary holds
the necessary descriptions of data types, proper-
ties, and relations; Graph holds entity relations;
and Algorithm holds all necessary algorithms for
data processing and mining. This system achieves
three-level transparency for TDaaS:
1. Data collection is transparent to data users.
2. Data integration is transparent to data provid-
ers.
3. The data as a service is transparent to both
data users and providers.
The main four components of the TDaaS sys-
tem are the Transparent Client, Transparent Serv-
er, DaaS Agent, Data Source Service Center, and
Data Processing Service Center. In an on-demand
service mode [9], all the data processing and ser-
vice models in TDaaS are designed for transpar-
ent services. Generally, each kind of traffic data
has its own characteristics. For example, vehicle
trajectory generation needs a complex model
that includes linking GPS locations by time series
and matching them to the road network, while
for video data, a knowledge extraction model is
required for discovering vehicle profiles and mov-
ing patterns. That is, not every node can process
the same kinds of data, but they all need to take
into account computing resources, storage capac-
ity, and connectivity.
Although all the data can be distributed and
1 3
Location Camera
data data
FIGURE 1. KID-driven TEC computing paradigm.
locally stored, when the data are required and
sent to the data center in the cloud, data inte-
gration and processing are conducted there.
This approach inevitably has the problems of a
cloud-only platform. To solve them, the TEC para
digm, described below, is used.
Embedding the KID Model into TEC
In contrast to cloud-only platforms, TEC is a
framework that distributes the storage and pro-
cessing of large sets of traffic data to the edge
servers closer to the IoT devices. Each IoT device
is connected to an edge server that has the ability
to store and preprocess data as well as select or
even provide services. To be aware of the data
service situation (e.g., what data are requested
or what data resources are available) and enable
data service provision (e.g., what resources are
needed and where to send data for processing)
the TEC computing paradigm requires a cogni-
tive model with its associated mechanisms. There-
fore, the KID model is embedded into the TEC
framework, and drives dynamic recognition of
the traffic situation and service requirements. This
dynamically and intelligently coordinates the edge
servers and cloud for effective resource allocation
and efficient network bandwidth usage, enabling
practical applications.
The KID model has three cognitive stages:
interpretation, assimilation, and instantiation.
All these three stages require prior knowledge.
Therefore, K-store, a knowledge repository struc-
ture, is the core element and consists of the triple
〈Vocabulary, Graph, Algorithm〉. Their contents
and relations are given in Fig. 2.
Vocabulary is a collection of data type defini-
tions, including their potential properties, and the
relations among them. With these properties and
relations, the relevant knowledge can be matched
as requested. Several standard vocabularies such
as DBPedia, YAGO, and schema.org [10] can be
used. However, there are few vocabularies cater-

IEEE Network • January/February 2018 35

 Therefore, only the necessary data, information,
e.g. Double Double and knowledge are sent to the cloud instead of
Longitude Latitude all the data. The KID model uses three cognitive
GPSSensor stages or processes: interpretation of the incom-
servedBy embeddedOn ing data, assimilation of the interpreted infor-
Vocabulary mation, and instantiation of knowledge for the
Server Vehicle
provision of services. Figure 3 gives an overview

ry es
ula anc
of the KID-driven TDaaS system under the TEC

cab st

Alg itio
computing paradigm.
Vo re in

de
fin
ori ns
h
As Fig. 3 shows, the KID model is embedded
s in h a

Vo nd o
ap

thm in
sse rap

c a b utp
Gr

a
in the edge server. Knowledge triples 〈Vocabu-

wil V
cla e g

he

ula uts

l p oc
st

the
lary, Graph, Algorithm〉 in the K-store are retrieved
the th

r y of

us a bu
fie
of ies in

sp th

h n la
eci
to support the three cognitive processes, that is,

eci e A

ew r y
sp
tit

fie lg
interpretation, assimilation, and instantiation. Data
En

ry

s t or
ula

he ith
are therefore transformed into information, and
cab

inp ms
Entities of Graph are
Vo

further into knowledge. During these process-

uts
inputs of Algorithms
Graph Algorithm
Outputs of Algorithms
enrich the Graph
e.g. e.g.
Longitude URL: algorithms/vehicleSpeedEstimation/
GPSSensor#001
139.0011 Input Demo:
Latitude {values:[
embeddedOn
servedBy {Ing: 139.0011, lat: 39.0022, t: 08081322}
39.0022 ]}
Taxi#002 Output Demo:
EdgeServer#003
{values:[{t:08081322, speed:36.5}]}
FIGURE 2. Knowledge repository structure and examples.
ing for traffic data, and there is a need to expand
them for TDaaS applications.
Graph is a knowledge representation that is
composed of vertices and links [11]. A vertex
represents an entity, and a link holds a relation
between two entities. The whole Graph is a set
of entities and their relations, which are defined
in Vocabulary. Entities in Graph can be inputs of
Algorithm, and outputs of Algorithm enrich Graph
in return.
Algorithm is a pool that holds a collection of
executable programs. Although they are regard-
ed as a type of knowledge that can extract fea-
tures, discover moving patterns, or even support
decision making, they cannot be represented in
Graph. They are deployed in a separate runtime
environment and can be exported to other sys-
tems as services.
For better understanding, examples of Vocab-
ulary, Graph, and Algorithm are given in Fig. 2.
in the Vocabulary, GPSSensor is a data type defi-
nition, longitude is a property, and embeddedOn
is a relation; in the Graph, GPSSensor#001 and
Taxi#002 are entities; and in the Algorithm, the
presented instance is called vehicleSpeedEstima-
tion, which takes vehicle position records as input
and outputs vehicle speeds as a time series.
Overview of the KID-Driven TDaaS System
When the TEC paradigm is embedded with the
KID model, it is enhanced with the KID model’s
cognitive ability to smartly:
• Direct data to the cloud or edge server for
processing
• Direct information (i.e., data endowed with
meaning) to the global or local K-store for
assimilation
• Direct knowledge to the cloud for sharing or
to the local K-store for fusion.
es, some data, information, and knowledge are
stored in the local D-store, I-store, and K-store, but
some are sent to the cloud. The edge server has
service workers that provide services directly back
to the IoT devices if information and knowledge
from other edge servers are not required. That is,
future IoT devices are transparent clients that can
be both data collectors and service receivers in
a local processing mode. In this mode, data pro-
cessing and service provision are conducted com-
pletely locally without going through the Internet
to the cloud.
For some cases, the source data or the inter-
mediate results of local processing have to be
sent to the cloud. Of course, the cloud generally
holds more computational and storage resources;
balancing these resources considering network
bandwidth and network traffic conditions is a key
issue. The KID model aims to optimize the bal-
ance between resource allocation and computa-
tion with its growing knowledge as it interprets
external data, similar to humans’ recognition of
the external world.
Determining what data to send, where to send
it, and how to send it is done by the KID model
based on its awareness of both data resources
and data service situations while it continuously
interprets incoming data using prior knowledge in
the K-Store. Knowledge in a local K-Store can be
updated to the global K-Store in the cloud, and
any local K-Store can share the knowledge in the
global K-Store with permission.
In a TDaaS system, the data providers are IoT
devices and the service receivers are Internet of
Things (IoT) devices/things or human users. Ser-
vice providers can be the edge or cloud servers.
The data providers do not need to know how
data are collected and processed; these process-
es are transparent to them. Similarly, how the
service is formed is transparent to service receiv-
ers. Three levels (data collection, processing and
integration, and services) are transparent to data
providers and service receivers. In the next sec-
tion, we describe how the KID model enables the
three-level transparency.
TDaaS Example
When requesting a TDaaS, such as an estima-
tion of whether there are any traffic events, a
user first posts the request to a URL on the cloud
server. The cloud server parses the URL and
maps it to the service algorithm trafficEvents().
Moreover, algorithm parameters to specify the
time span and road sections for the required traf-

36 IEEE Network • January/February 2018

 IOT devices
Service
clients Environment Vehicle
data Video data
behavior data

Data as a service
Service worker D
Real time History Traffic D-store
traffic event flow Streaming
condition influence distribution Sub-task parsing HDFS data
files
Scheduling
Big data service engine
Data mining Interpretation I
Service Knowledge Data
parsing matching mining Local K-store
I-store
Global K-store Local Assimilation
vocabulary RDBMS
Global Global Global
vocabulary graphDB algorithm Local Local K
algorithm graphDB
Cloud server Edge server

FIGURE 3. Overview of the KID-driven TDaaS system.

fic events are also posted. Instead of outputting

the final results, the cloud server only outputs a 1
service plan. When it is executed, the final results
are produced. The service plan comprises a list: [D11 D21 D31••• Dm1] I1 I2 I3 ••• IT K1
[〈order1, edgeServer1, algorithm1〉, 〈order2, edg- 2 3
[D12 D22 D32••• Dn2] ••• K2
eServer 2 , algorithm 2 〉, …, 〈order n , edgeServer n , •••
algorithmn〉]. Here, order indicates the sequence K-store TDaaS
••• ••• ••• ••• K3
of service execution, edgeServer determines
which edge server to use, and algorithm denotes [D1t D2t D3t••• Dkt] •••
which algorithm on the edge server should be
invoked. The service plan is then executed in 1 Interpretation 2 Assimilation 3 Instantiation
order by the specified edge servers and produc-
es the final result. FIGURE 4. Three cognitive processes from data to knowledge.

KID Model Enables Transparency
The KID model [12] was inspired by human cog-
nitive processes: signals that stimulate the brain
are defined as data and denoted as D; sub-
sequently, the nervous system transforms data
into information, denoted as I; finally, the brain
understands the information and transforms it
into knowledge, denoted as K, and stores it in
memory by establishing connections with other
related knowledge. Figure 4 shows an example
of the present processes of transforming data
into knowledge. Driven by KID, the TEC comput-
ing paradigm is transparent at three levels, data,
model, and services, which correspond to three
abstract functions: interpretation(), assimilation(),
and instantiation(), respectively. These three pro-
cesses are defined as follows. For clarity, the nota-
tions in the equations are consistent with those in
Fig. 4.
I nterpretation for Data Transparency
After data are collected by IoT devices, they are
outside the information systems. Here, interpre-
tation() means endowing the data with meaning
by finding associative knowledge, which is stored
in the K-Store, to interpret it. This process can be
expressed as
{
interpretation() : D11, D21 ,…, D1m → I1 } K
(1)
where D11, D21, …, 1
Dm represent input data, I1 rep-
resents the newly produced information, and the
K on the arrow represents the predefined knowl-
edge in the K-Store. This indicates that when
producing new information, more than one data
source may be used.
This process is transparent with respect to
data because the data model is predefined in the
vocabulary, and each data model is bound with
a specific interpretation(). The system can intelli-
gently recognize the incoming data and input it
in the specific interpretation() that produces the
wanted information.
Assimilation for Model Transparency
The newly generated information is assimilated by
assimilation() into the body of the K-store by link-
ing it to existing relevant knowledge. This means
that not only are new entities added, but also
new relations are established. This process can be
expressed as
assimilation() : { I1, I 2 ,…, I t } → K1
K
(2)
where I1, I2, …, It represent the information pro-
duced in the interpretation parse and K1 is the
new knowledge, which is added into the K-Store,
enriching it.
This process is transparent with respect to
model because it is triggered by the former pro-
cess, automatically absorbs information as knowl-
edge, and puts knowledge in the correct place,
on either the edge or cloud servers.

IEEE Network • January/February 2018 37

 fetched from the cloud side, they are locally exe-
Cloud server cuted via a streaming approach. Moreover, KID is
Central K-store Global graph
also modular.
TDaaS Service Just as different models of cars are produced
Driving behavior Traffic flow regulation consumer by assembly on the same modern automotive
production line following different designs, the
Driving pattern Events and emergencies
related data subgraph and algorithm are treated
as a block because the same edge computing
node can load different datasets or algorithms
MEC server A Sub-graph A according to the work pushed by the cloud. This
MEC server B means that the benefit of transparent computing
Road K Sub-graph B is that local computing capabilities can be fully uti-
congestion
lized because the computing resources are glob-
Individual K
speed ally optimized and can be automatically streamed
Interpretation to and executed on edge nodes.
A4: road congestion estimation
Interpretation Case Study of Expressway Event Detection
A5: speed estimation Here, a case study of expressway event detec-
Traffic I I Travel tion is presented to illustrate how TEC supports
density speed
TDaaS. We also experimentally evaluate how well
Trajectory I our KID-driven TEC computing paradigm works
Interpretation with real data.
A1: traffic density estimation Interpretation Scenario Description
A2: travel speed estimation A3: trajectory building In contrast to urban roads, a highway is a closed
system, which means that once an accident hap-
Video pens or there is bad weather such as heavy fog,
D stream GPS location D
vehicles are easily stuck in traffic and unable to
immediately change their route because there are
IoT devices Traffic fewer exits. Travelers expect traffic events identi-
events fied by TDaaS to be reported as soon as possible
Road Road Road so that they may choose another route. Transpor-
section A section B section C tation departments want to use TDaaS to eval-
uate whether an expressway should be closed.
FIGURE 5. KID-driven TEC computing in expressway event detection. As shown in Fig. 5, we selected a part of the G6
highway, which starts from Fourth — Ring — Road
and ends at Badaling — Great — Wall, covering
about 70 km. This road bears heavy daily traffic,
Instantiation for Service Transparency comprising not only numerous freight vehicles,
Knowledge must be instantiated by the instantia- but also many tourist vehicles traveling to the
tion() function before it is applied to solve a prob- Great Wall. Once the expressway is affected by a
lem or used in an application. This enables the traffic event or bad weather, travelers spend twice
application of knowledge to real-world problems. as long traveling along it.
TDaaS is a good example of knowledge applica- On a key segment of the expressway in Bei-
tion. This process can be defined as jing’s downtown area, surveillance video cameras
K2 are deployed every kilometer. Using these, we
instantiation() : K1 → Service (3) can estimate the traffic flow volume. The loca-
where K1 is the knowledge on which the service tion records of taxis, buses, and trucks that are
is provided, that is, the knowledge for answering equipped with GPS are collected by different
specific requests. For instance, if the TDaaS for transportation departments or companies. Using
traffic conditions is required, knowledge stored in these, we can learn the moving patterns of vehi-
the graph that correctly describes the traffic con- cles to identify the spatial-temporal scope of influ-
ditions is this kind of knowledge. ence. Moreover, the entering and exiting records
The previous example shows that the instantia- of each vehicle that uses electronic toll collection
tion process is transparent with respect to service (ETC), which is similar to EZpass in the United
because it hides the details of how the service is States, are collected by the highway management
provided from the service consumers. department.
In this case, as shown in Fig. 5, edge server A
Dynamic Data Service Provisioning on KID belongs to the transportation department, which
In the era of IoT, the data stored in the D-store can obtain travel speeds based on GPS records.
are multidimensional, continuous, rapidly pro- Edge server B is used for extracting traffic flow
duced, and change over time and space. That is, volume and travel speed knowledge from massive
the computing resources need to be suitable in video stream data.
situations where the speed of service response The existing method of transmitting all the data
time is high, especially when there is a significant to the cloud, including a large number of video
growth in data volume. Hence, KID is a tailored streams and billions of vehicle location records, is
transparent computing-based architecture for slow and impedes real-time services. In contrast,
TEC, which means it consists of knowledge-relat- in KID-driven TEC, edge servers act as service
ed subsets of specific predefined organized data workers and are responsible for processing the
and algorithm. Once the on-demand services are data collected from their own local edge serv-

38 IEEE Network • January/February 2018

 700
TC1 TC2 TEC KID-TEC 1200
TC1 TC2 TEC KID-TEC
600
1000
500

The amount of data transmitted

800

on the Internet (Mb)

400
Latency (s)

600
300

200 400

100 200

0
130.1 247.4 385.1 515.9 639.2 763.5 930.1 0
130.1 247.4 385.1 515.9 639.2 763.5 930.1
Data size (Mb)
Data size (Mb)
(a)
(b)
120
TC1 TC2 TEC KID-TEC
2
TEC KID-TEC
100 1.8
1.6
80 1.4

Retrieval latency (s)

CPU usage (%)

1.2
60 1
0.8
40 0.6
0.4
20 0.2
0
10,000 20,000 30,000 40,000 50,000 60,000 70,000
0
130.1 247.4 385.1 515.9 639.2 763.5 930.1 Entities in the local knowledge graph
Data size (Mb) (d)
(c)

FIGURE 6. Performance comparison of cloud-only TEC and KID-TEC.

ers. Data are transformed into knowledge before rithm is implemented in Python and contained
transmission to the cloud. This process reduces in a Python sandbox by Anaconda so that the
the computational burden of the cloud. dependencies can be transmitted along with the
codes. The sandbox uses 54 Mb.
Data Description
There are five kinds of data collected in the sys- Experiments
tem: GPS locations, highway pass records, vid- Three Windows Server 2012 64-bit systems (12
eos, events, and weather data. GPS locations and CPUs, 128 GB main memory) were used for sim-
video data are complex data, and to handle them, ulating the edge servers. A Tecent Cloud (https://
high-capacity and high-performance systems are cloud.qq.com/) server was used as the cloud. The
required to meet real-time requirements. For GPS proposed method was compared with a cloud
locations, a complex model is needed to link and computing model without edge servers. To sim-
match them on the road. About 1000 vehicles ulate a surveillance video camera with compu-
pass through a road section; hence, millions of tational ability, a smartphone with an Android
records must be processed because there are operating system was utilized. The network band-
thousands of road sections. A surveillance camera width within the local area network was 128
with 720 P (1280 × 720) produces about 42 GB Mb/s. The related algorithms were implemented
of video per day, which is sent to the edge servers with Java using OpenCV for video processing.
as streaming data. To estimate the performance Within the TEC, the surveillance cameras
of the proposed KID-driven TEC, the simulation were only responsible for collecting and trans-
experiment takes video files ranging from about mitting raw data. The edge servers received and
100 MB to about 1 GB in size. Knowledge is processed the video stream and then discovered
extracted from these unstructured videos. the different moving patterns caused by traffic
For the algorithm, our video processing algo- accidents. Next, the edge servers transferred the
rithm counts the number of vehicles in each results to the cloud as knowledge.
frame. Using the OpenCV framework, this func- The experiments considered the following sce-
tion first recognizes the background and then narios (Fig. 6):
picks out moving areas, which should be vehi- • IoT devices collect data that are then trans-
cles. Morphological algorithms are also applied to mitted to the cloud, which deals with the
eliminate interference caused by noise. The algo- data for decision making (TC1).

IEEE Network • January/February 2018 39


The cloud in the future may just take the role of a manager that controls registering, interacting with,
and coordinating edge services, and any new edge server with new services can be connected and
disconnected, which enables the architecture to be extensible.
• IoT devices collect data and process data
into knowledge. All the knowledge is then
sent to the cloud (TC2).
• IoT devices collect data and transmit them to
edge servers. Edge servers process the data
and then push the results to the cloud (TEC).
• The local K-Store is operated in dynamic
mode, which means that before it process-
es the data, it loads Vocabulary, Graph, and
Algorithm from the cloud dynamically, and
flushes temporary knowledge every time
processing is performed (KID-TEC).
The performance of each scenario involves
time latency, the amount of data transmitted
through the Internet, and the computational load
of the cloud server (indicated by CPU usage per-
centage), as shown in Figs. 6a–6c, respectively. A
specific comparison between the performance of
TEC and KID-TEC is also presented in Fig. 6d.
As shown in Fig. 6a, TC1 and TC2 are slower
than TEC and KID-TEC. This is because although
the computation time varies slightly between
these computing paradigms, TC1 and TC2 spend
more time transmitting data through the Internet.
This indicates that both TEC and KID-TEC are
more suitable for offering low-latency services.
Similarly, Fig. 6b shows that, in the TEC and KID-
TEC scenarios, smaller amounts of data are trans-
mitted through the Internet and less network
bandwidth is consumed. Figure 6c illustrates
that because the workload of the cloud server
is reduced in TEC and KID-TEC, its CPU usage
remains at a lower level. Figure 6d shows anoth-
er experiment that demonstrates the advantag-
es of KID-TEC over TEC without KID. KID-TEC
adopts a dynamic K-Store and loads knowledge
from the cloud in an on-demand way, flushing
temporary knowledge when one job is done.
Hence, as the knowledge of the cloud accu-
mulates, the knowledge in the edge is kept at
a constant level. This is helpful for promptly
responding to the information retrieved from the
knowledge base.
In addition, the advantages of TEC or KID-
TEC for protecting privacy are also indicated.
Because raw video streams originally include pri-
vacy information such as vehicle plate number
and car positions (according to the position of the
video camera), in TC1 and TC2, this information
is transmitted through the Internet, and the risk
of exposure is higher. However, in TEC and KID-
TEC, only the results of the video processing are
transmitted, separate from the privacy informa-
tion, so they are safer.
Conclusion and Perspectives
The proposed TEC computing paradigm with the
KID model embedded can both support low-la-
tency local responses and share global awareness.
Moreover, it optimizes data flow, information
flow, and knowledge discovery/generation. In this
article, we describe the KID model and explain
how it plays an important role in interpreting
40
incoming data, assimilating information into the
body of knowledge, and instantiating knowledge
for the use of traffic data as a service. We noted
that the KID-driven TEC computing paradigm has
the data-driven characteristics of knowledge dis-
covery, knowledge generation, and knowledge
evolution, a process comprising three cyclic stag-
es from data to knowledge, and interaction with
the external world when receiving data from IoT
devices and providing services. Its feasibility and
advantages were demonstrated in a case study
through the implementation details of a TDaaS
application.
As a novel computing paradigm, KID-driven
edge computing could be an important research
topic. Once computing platforms such as cloud
and edge servers have been built, endeavors can
focus on the enrichment of various services — not
only TDaaS, as in this article, but also data as a
service (DaaS) in any field, which is called xDaaS.
It may be possible to set up a service register
mechanism for TEC services and encourage more
people to contribute to the TEC computing para-
digm on this common shared platform. Note that
the cloud in the future may just take the role of a
manager that controls registering, interacting with,
and coordinating edge services, and any new
edge server with new services can be connected
and disconnected, which enables the architec-
ture to be extensible. Moreover, the recent break-
throughs in deep learning [13], together with the
KID model, which is a cognitive process, enhance
TDaaS by evolving and making the TEC comput-
ing paradigm smarter. However, the challenges
are to find appropriate mechanisms for charac-
terizing the inputs and outputs of deep learning
algorithms [14].
Acknowledgment
The work is partially supported by the Japan Soci-
ety for the Promotion of Science Grants-in-Aid
for Scientific Research (No. 25330270 and No.
26330350) and by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (No. 51408018).
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Biographies
Bowen Du received his B.S. degree from Shijiazhuang Tiedao
University, China, and his Ph.D. degree in computer science
and engineering from Beihang University, Beijing, China, in
2005 and 2013, respectively. Currently, he is an assistant pro-
fessor with the State Key Laboratory of Software Development
Environment, Beihang University. His research interests include
smart city technology, traffic data mining, and data service.
Runhe Huang [SM’17] is a full professor in the Faculty of Com-
puter and Information Sciences at Hosei University, Japan. She
received a Sino-Britain Friendship Scholarship for her Ph.D.
study in the United Kingdom and received her Ph.D. in comput-
er science and mathematics from the University of the West of
IEEE Network • January/February 2018
England in 1993. Her research fields include cognitive comput-
ing, brain modeling, computational intelligence computing, big
data, and machine learning.
Zhipu Xie received his B.S. in information and computing science
from Central South University, Changsha, China, in 2013. He is
now a Ph.D. degree candidate in computer science and engineer-
ing at Beihang University. His research interests include smart city
technology, intelligent transportation, and city big data mining.
Jianhua Ma is a full professor in the Faculty of Computer and
Information Sciences at Hosei University, Japan. He received his
B.S. and M.S. degrees from National University of Defense Tech-
nology, China, in 1982 and 1985, respectively, and his Ph.D.
degree from Xidian University, China, in 1990. His research
interests include multimedia, networks, ubiquitous computing,
social computing, and cyber intelligence. He is a founding Chair
of the IEEE CIS Smart World Technical Committee (founded
in 2016) and the IEEE SMC Cybermatics Technical Committee
(founded in 2016).
Weifeng Lv received his B.S. degree in computer science and
engineering from Shandong University, Jinan, China, and his
Ph.D. degree in computer science and engineering from Bei-
hang University in 1992 and 1998, respectively. Currently, he
is a professor with the State Key Laboratory of Software Devel-
opment Environment, Beihang University. His research interests
include smart city technology and mass data processing.
41