Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 200 (2022) 107252

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Computers and Electronics in Agriculture

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/compag

Reliability provisioning for Fog Nodes in Smart Farming IoT-Fog-Cloud

continuum
Ana Isabel Montoya-Munoz a ,∗, Rodrigo A.C. da Silva b , Oscar M. Caicedo Rendon a ,∗,
Nelson L.S. da Fonseca b
a
Department of Telematics Engineering, Engineering Telematics Group, Universidad del Cauca, Popayán 190002, Colombia
b Institute of Computing, State University of Campinas, Brazil

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: Reliability is essential in Smart Farming supported by the IoT-Fog-Cloud continuum. Smart Farms’ unprotection
Reliability may cause significant economic losses and low yields of production. This paper introduces an optimization
Smart Farming model for providing reliability and, consequently, service continuity to the IoT-Fog-Cloud continuum-based
Internet of Things
smart farms. The proposed model allows Smart Farming stakeholders to find the optimal number of Fog Nodes
Fog Computing
needed to deploy farming services considering the heterogeneity in the fog capabilities, resource demands,
Optimization
Redundancy
redundancy techniques, and reliability requirements. The model was solved using linear programming and
evaluated with different demands and protection schemes. Results show that protection schemes guarantee
high reliability and reveal that a shared redundancy scheme reduces deployment cost and yet provides
reliability. Results also indicate that deployment costs and resources depend on the type of fog-based smart
farm services to serve. Moreover, they show that deploying more low-resource hardware can be less expensive
for low-reliability demands than deploying with a few high-resource hardware.

1. Introduction
Smart Farming (SF) refers to apply Information and Communication
Technologies to agriculture (Wolfert et al., 2017). SF aims at increasing
the quality of products, improving crop production, and optimizing
agriculture yield with minimum human intervention (Chandak and
Agrawal, 2017)(Subashini et al., 2018; Ray, 2017; Kamilaris et al.,
2017). Fog Computing (FC) is pivotal for realizing SF because FC
allows farmers to use cloud capabilities in their farms, i.e., at the
network’s edge (Kelly et al., 2013; Chaudhary et al., 2011; Carpio
et al., 2017; Minh et al., 2017). A significant shortcoming in FC-based
SF is reliability. Remarkably, the failure of one or various Fog Nodes
(FNs, e.g., small servers) can cause farming services disruptions and,
consequently, significant economic losses and low production in crops
(Jayaraman et al., 2016; Mahmood et al., 2015; Dalton, 2018). Service
discontinuity is not uncommon in SF based on FC since FNs deployed in
outdoor devices usually operate under harsh environmental conditions
(Idoje et al., 2021; Gupta et al., 2020). For example, in a coffee farm’s
communication network, if the FN (e.g., a Raspberry Pi) running the
service responsible for transferring taste and aroma data of coffee
goes down, the coffee production will not meet the quality standards,
preventing international sales (Walter et al., 2017).
Several works have addressed the reliability issue in diverse appli-
cation domains like IoT and 5G. Authors like Boncea and Bacivarov
(2016) and Kang and Choo (2018) provided reliability in edge gateways
using an alert manager and a self-configuring mechanism to automate
the reaction to failures in IoT systems and set up IoT devices auto-
matically after failures. Nevertheless, those authors did not evaluate
reliability as a performance metric. The works proposed in Elbamby
et al. (2018), Huang et al. (2018) and Wang et al. (2018) addressed
reliability considering delay, data integrity, and data collection in 5G
and FC-based IoT, but they did not introduce any traditional protec-
tion scheme (i.e., 1:1 - dedicated, and 1:N - shared) for enhancing
FNs. Lähderanta et al. (2021) presented an approach that replicates
the workload of access points on different edge servers seeking to
enhance reliability, but it disregards the deployment costs’ relevance.
Solutions based on optimization algorithms considered the dedicated
and shared protection schemes to provide reliability for edge-based
5G/6G latency-stringent services (Chantre and da Fonseca, 2020, 2018;
Ortin et al., 2022). It is noteworthy that the works facing the reliability
issue in domains different from SF must be adapted and evaluated
before claiming their feasibility in this new domain.

∗ Corresponding authors.
E-mail addresses: aimontoya@unicauca.edu.co (A.I. Montoya-Munoz), rodrigo@lrc.ic.unicamp.br (R.A.C.d. Silva), omcaicedo@unicauca.edu.co
(O.M.C. Rendon), nfonseca@ic.unicamp.br (N.L.S.d. Fonseca).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compag.2022.107252
Received 20 December 2021; Received in revised form 29 April 2022; Accepted 20 July 2022
Available online 3 August 2022
0168-1699/© 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
A.I. Montoya-Munoz et al.
Various works have highlighted the importance of providing relia-
bility in the SF domain (Fathallah et al., 2022; Dansana et al., 2022).
Authors like Kulau et al. (2016), Omar et al. (2020), Cagnetti et al.
(2020), and Londra et al. (2021) addressed reliability by considering
aspects such as receiving sensor data correctly and saving sensors’
energy to avoid battery waste and damages. Nevertheless, they did
not use redundancy-based protection schemes to provide reliability to
SF decision-making systems. The investigation performed by Carpio
et al. (2017) considered FC-based SF to manage an animal welfare
application with a local database and a remote database devised to
replicate data, but without any backup scheme for the local one. In
previous work (Montoya-Munoz and Caicedo, 2020), we proposed an
approach for providing reliable data collection in SF based on the IoT-
Fog-Cloud continuum by detecting and replacing outliers; however, it
did not include any backup for FNs. As far as we know, no work has
proposed a solution to achieve protected smart farms considering the
FNs’ reliability and the deployment costs for farmers as we do in this
paper.
As described, reliability is essential in SF supported by the IoT-Fog-
Cloud continuum since Smart Farms’ unprotection may cause signifi-
cant economic losses and low production yields. This paper introduces
an optimization model to provide reliability and, as a result, service
continuity to the IoT-Fog-Cloud continuum-based smart farms. Our
model allows SF stakeholders to find the optimal number of FNs
needed to deploy farming services considering the heterogeneity in FNs
capabilities, farm services computational resource demands, (dedicated
and shared) redundancy techniques, and reliability requirements. We
introduce two novel concepts to build up the model. The first one is the
virtual Smart Farming Function (vSFF), representing a software func-
tion of farm services. The second concept is the Smart Farming Function
Chain (SFFC), representing a farm service formed by several vSFFs.
The model was solved using linear programming and evaluated with
different demands and protection schemes. Results reveal several facts.
1 Protection schemes guarantee high reliability and, consequently,
improve FC-based SF. 2 If backup nodes are shared, the cost of
FNs deployment can be significantly reduced, providing good levels of
reliability. 3 The price increases significantly for reliability demands
≥ 70%. 4 The type of services to serve has a notable impact on the FC-
based SF deployment, significantly increasing required resources and
costs. 5 A maximum of three primary ones should share a secondary
node since the difference in price deployment is insignificant for 𝑁 > 3
compared to the potential unprotection of nodes without backup. 6
If the reliability demanded is lower than 70%, it could be cheaper for
small farms with low-demand tasks to deploy low-resource hardware
than high-featured hardware.
The main contributions of this paper are:
• The formulation of optimization problem to minimize deployment
cost of FC-based SF to farmers, considering heterogeneous FNs
under reliability constraints.
• A comparison of traditional protection schemes 1:1 and 1:N for
providing reliability in SF.
The rest of this paper includes the following sections. Section 3
details the problem addressed in this research, while Section 4 presents
the mathematical problem formulation. Section 5 presents the numer-
ical results and their analysis, and Section 6 concludes the paper and
presents implications for future work.
2. Related work
This section presents the related work to our proposal. The in-
vestigations performed by (Kulau et al., 2016; Londra et al., 2021)
highlighted the relevance of reliability in the SF domain from different
perspectives. Kulau et al. (2016) evaluated, in an outdoor testbed for
SF applications called PotatoNet, the energy efficiency and reliability
of the data collection process when wireless sensors operate with the
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Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 200 (2022) 107252
nominal voltage level and with levels below the recommended by the
manufacturer. Cagnetti et al. (2020) compared the protocols most ap-
plied for communicating wireless sensors in vast agriculture scenarios,
such as power-efficient gathering in sensor information systems, ad-
hoc on-demand distance vector routing, low-energy adaptive clustering
hierarchy, and multipath ring routing, regarding energy consumption
and reliability in transmitting data. Londra et al. (2021) analyzed the
reliability of the rainwater harvesting tanks employed to meet the
water needs of tomato and begonia crops cultivated in greenhouses in
southeast Europe. It is noteworthy that the above-cited investigations
neither employed redundancy to provide reliability nor considered
FC-based SF.
Conversely to the works (Kulau et al., 2016; Londra et al., 2021),
the work presented by Carpio et al. (2017) proposed a solution for
data reliability in an FC-based SF scenario. Such a solution centered
on realizing a reliable animal welfare application by including a local
database located in the fog and a remote database located in the
cloud to provide data replication when application failures happen.
This solution did not provide a backup system for the fog-located
database. Thus, it could suffer service outages if the local database
is down and the fog and cloud links are unavailable. Furthermore,
the authors did not analyze the deployment costs of the solution. The
investigation carried out by Omar et al. (2020) evaluated the accuracy
and data reliability collected by IoT sensors, transmitted by Arduino-
based FNs, and received by commercial IoT platforms (ThingSpeak
and Blink). The evaluation did not include redundancy for the FNs
or cost analysis. Our previous work (Montoya-Munoz and Caicedo,
2020) also considered FC-based SF. In particular, we introduced a
solution formed by two software modules for providing reliability to
the data supporting decision-making in smart farms. The first one de-
tected outliers with several Machine Learning (ML) algorithms, namely
density-based spatial clustering of applications (Schubert et al., 2017),
support vector machine (Pradhan, 2012), and isolation forest (Ding and
Fei, 2013). The second module replaced the detected outliers using
nearest neighbor (Rukundo, 2012), cubic spline (László, 2005), and
linear interpolation (Blu et al., 2004). We did not analyze costs nor
consider protection schemes for offering reliable smart farm data in that
solution as this paper does.
In the networking domain, diverse investigations have addressed
reliability by raising and solving optimization problems. Elbamby et al.
(2018) introduced a proactive edge caching mechanism of popular
tasks for realizing ultra-reliable and low-latency communication ser-
vices in 5G networks. The mechanism included a game-based matching
solution (Gu et al., 2015) that replayed the service requests (computing
tasks) to edge servers, called cloudlets, to ensure minimal computing
latency and meet reliability requirements. It is noteworthy that the
mechanism did not involve backup-based protection schemes for nodes
caching the most popular tasks nor carry out a cost analysis. Lähderanta
et al. (2021) introduced the PACK algorithm to optimize the place-
ment of a fixed number of edge servers by minimizing the distances
between servers and access points while balancing the system workload
and meeting server capacity constraints. For designing PACK, a block
coordinate descent algorithm with integer programming steps (Wright,
2015), reliability and costs were considered by reserving capacity only
for critical access points and replicating their workload typically to two
edge servers instead of just one. It is relevant to highlight that the
authors did not consider costs as an evaluation metric. Furthermore,
they associated the reliability evaluation with the satisfaction of latency
requirements.
Chantre and da Fonseca (2018) addressed the optimal placement
problem of edge devices for achieving reliable and cost-effective broad-
casting services in 5G small cells that followed the network functions
virtualization paradigm. The authors solved the edge allocation prob-
lem by using two algorithms, namely non-dominated sorting genetic-II
(Deb et al., 2002) and multi-objective particle swarm optimization
(Wang and Qian, 2008). For reliability purposes, they used standby
A.I. Montoya-Munoz et al.
Fig. 1. Fog Computing-based Smart Farming.
backup FNs that serve the demands hosted by one or more primary
FNs when they fail or become overloaded. The same authors extended
their work (Chantre and da Fonseca, 2020) to cope with the problem of
allocating virtual network functions in mobile edge computing nodes.
They furnish ultra-reliable and latency-sensitive services using 1:1 and
1:N protection schemes when failures happen in nodes forming 5G
network slices. Ortin et al. (2022) proposed a scaling mechanism to
meet the strict reliability requirements demanded by 5G/6G services.
The mechanism included an optimization algorithm that keeps the
reliability above the desired level and minimizes the energy consump-
tion (only turning on the needed resources). Reliability is provided by
anticipating traffic demand and migrating the virtual network functions
of servers in failure.
The above-related work description reveals diverse facts. First, al-
though reliability is a standardized measure in several engineering
disciplines and pivotal for realizing smart farms based on the IoT-Fog-
Cloud continuum (Fathallah et al., 2022; Dansana et al., 2022), there
is no agreed definition for reliability in the SF domain (Moore et al.,
2020). In this vein, for this paper, we decided to deal with reliability
(probability of correct service continuity) as the telecommunications
domain does (Nojo and Watanabe, 1993; Ortin et al., 2022). Thus, we
defined SF’s reliability as the non-failure probability of farm services
(involving the FNs supporting them) for a given operation time. Second,
the investigations on reliability in SF have not used redundancy-based
protection schemes to avoid outages in the farm services running on
FNs. Furthermore, those investigations disregard costs, a fundamental
factor for deploying SF. Third, the work conducted in application do-
mains different from SF must be adapted and evaluated before claiming
its applicability in FC-based SF. From the raised facts and unlike the re-
lated work, we are pioneers in proposing a formal model for designing
reliable smart farms. The model allows determining where the farmers
must place heterogeneous FNs to meet the reliability requirements of
farm services while minimizing SF deployment costs under dedicated
and shared protection schemes.
3. Problem statement
The farmers face many difficulties in realizing SF. Let us consider a
coffee farm as a motivation scenario to detail the problem. The coffee
supply chain is quite long. The transformation processes to guarantee
the quality of an export coffee are carried out mainly on the farm.
A coffee SF counts with various devices, such as weather stations
and wireless sensors, collecting essential data on the environmental
conditions of the coffee. These data are the primary input for mon-
itoring, control, and traceability applications. Since a coffee grower
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Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 200 (2022) 107252
generally makes decisions based on the information provided by the
applications, the data that supports them must be reliable. For example,
coffee growers need to know how much coffee they can produce in the
year. Models based on climate data provide this information, but the
prediction will surely not be very accurate if the monitoring system
fails. This problem can affect the annual programs of the farmers,
preventing an adequate organization of resources, money, storage space
in the warehouse, and the recruitment of personnel. In addition, an
error in the control system for variables such as the temperature of
the coffee during drying could cause the parameter to go outside the
standardized levels, for which the coffee does not reach a sufficient
quality for export. This problem can represent losses of approximately
USD 1,000 per hectare for the farmer (Rodriguez et al., 2021).
Fig. 1 illustrates multiple smart farms of different crops in which
data is captured and transmitted to provide services to farmers. This
paper analyzes what happens if nodes providing the services fail due
to adverse environmental conditions, such as unexpected shutdowns,
power outages, and devices’ physical failures. Fails often occur on
SF because FNs operate in (unfavorable) extreme outdoor conditions;
thus, agricultural services would be interrupted, which could cause
significant economic losses and low production yields. In order to
protect the operation of FC-based SF, it is necessary to ensure that
even if one or more FNs fail, the services running on them and used
by farmers do not suffer outages. These services can be, for instance,
failure detection (identifying and isolating outliers from correct data)
and failure recovery (inferring data to replace outliers without losing
significance) presented in our previous work (Montoya-Munoz and
Caicedo, 2020). The referred services need computing capabilities to
execute ML algorithms and interpolation techniques for detecting and
treating outliers. Without this, the input data for applications such
as production forecasting will be unreliable and inaccurate. For that
reason, this section presents a model that allows designing a reliable
infrastructure of FNs protected by redundancy to provide FC-based
services to farmers while minimizing implementation costs.
Architecturally, Fig. 1 depicts the FC-based SF including the layers
of Cloud, Fog, and IoT (Montoya-Munoz and Caicedo, 2020). The
Cloud layer comprises one or more Data Centers, facilities with plenty
of processing, memory, and networking resources useful for running
SF services based on ML techniques (Kalyani and Collier, 2021). The
Things layer includes sensing devices for transmitting and receiving
data to and from the FNs (Bendouda et al., 2017; Casas-Velasco et al.,
2019). Typical IoT devices in SF are sensor-equipped tags, data logs,
and weather stations. The Fog layer is composed of FNs (physical or
virtual) that communicate with both end-users and data centers for
improving SF services based on the IoT-Fog-Cloud continuum (Alli and
A.I. Montoya-Munoz et al.
Fig. 2. Virtual Smart Farming Functions.
Fig. 3. Dedicated Scheme (1 ∶ 1).
Alam, 2020; Xiao and Krunz, 2017). FNs are, for instance, wireless
access points, raspberry pi, controllers, virtual network functions, and
servers.
The resources of FNs can be shared to meet demand points from
multiple farm services. A demand point represents a farm service re-
quest from farm users. Fig. 2 depicts farm services (i.e., SFFCs) and farm
functions (i.e., vSFFs). A farm service, such as traceability of crops and
production forecasting, corresponds to an SFFC with specific processing
and memory requirements. A service can demand more resources than
another; for instance, a forecasting service usually will demand more
computational resources than traceability because it could involve ML
algorithms. FNs can process one or more SFFCs on-demand according
to the available computational capacities for supporting the SFFCs’
requirements. A farm function, such as sensing data and alert control,
is a vSFF forming an SFFC. Remarkably, an SFFC can include another
one. For instance, the SFFC Alarm System includes the SFFC Monitoring
plus the vSFFs of control, report, and act. Furthermore, it is noteworthy
that if SFFC monitoring is unavailable, SFFC Forecasting becomes
unavailable too.
This paper designs a model to find the optimal CPU and RAM
resources allocation for SFFCs to meet the farmers’ demand points,
minimizing deployment costs under reliability constraints. The model
distinguishes three types of FNs for cost minimization: 0 - lowest re-
sources, 1 - medium resources, and 2 - highest resources. For reliability,
the model considers optimal assignation of backups, differentiates two
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Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 200 (2022) 107252
levels of protection assignment (i.e., 0 - primary node, and 1 - secondary
or backup node), and compares two protection schemes: 1:1 and 1:N.
Fig. 3 illustrates the 1 ∶ 1 protection scheme that assigns for the primary
FN containing one or more SFFCs a dedicated backup in a different FN
of the same type when the primary one fails. For instance, the primary
FN100 of type 0 process the SFFC1 composed of vSFF1 , vSFF2 , and
vSFF3 and SFFC5 composed of vSFF5 and vSFF7 ; in case of failure, the
dedicated backup FN201 of type 0 will be in charge of such as SFFCs.
Fig. 4 presents the 1 ∶ 𝑁 protection scheme in which there is a potential
backup FN (of the same or higher type) for the 𝑁 assigned primary
nodes. Therefore, the secondary FN can replace 𝑁 potential primary
nodes depending on memory and processing capabilities. For example,
the primary FN100 of type 0 processes the SFFC1 and SFFC7 , and the
primary FN310 of type 1 processes an SFFC composed of vSFF1 , vSFF2 ,
and vSFF5 . For the 1 ∶ 2 scenario, the secondary FN521 of type 2 is the
potential backup of the SFFCs of FN100 and FN310 in case of failure.
4. Problem formulation
This section presents the model devised to find the optimal number
of heterogeneous FNs (allocation problem in SF for hosting SFFCs)
based on available resources (i.e., processing and memory) and relia-
bility requirements, aiming at providing continuous connectivity and
minimizing deployment costs of FC-based SF. Section 4.1 presents the
A.I. Montoya-Munoz et al. Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 200 (2022) 107252

Fig. 4. Shared Scheme (1 ∶ 𝑁).

model formulation introducing its objective function, decision vari- Constraint (2) ensures that all demand points 𝑣 ∈ 𝑉 are served by
ables, and constraints related to primary FNs. Section 4.2 introduces primary nodes 𝑢 ∈ 𝑈 .
new constraints to model the protection schemes with the dedicated ∑∑
(1 ∶ 1 protection) and shared backup nodes (1 ∶ 𝑁 protection). Sec- 𝑦𝑢𝑖𝑘 ≤ 1 ∀𝑢 ∈ 𝑈 (3)
𝑘∈𝐾 𝑖∈𝐼
tion 4.3 describes the linearization of two constraints. This linearization
allows running the model in typical solvers. Section 4.4 explains how Constraint (3) restricts the allocation of only one type and only one
the farmers can use the formulation to obtain a solution for an actual role (primary/backup) per node. For instance, if the node 0 (𝑢 = 0) of
FC-based SF. Table 1 summarizes the notation used in the formulation. type 5 (𝑖 = 5) is activated as primary node (k=0), the model cannot
activate another node 𝑢 = 0.
4.1. Primary Fog Nodes ∑ ∑
𝑥𝑢𝑣 𝜏𝑣 ≤ 𝑦𝑢𝑖0 𝛹𝑢𝑖 ∀𝑢 ∈ 𝑈 (4)
𝑣∈𝑉 𝑖∈𝐼
Let 𝐺 = (𝑈 ∪𝑉 , 𝐸) be a bipartite graph in which 𝑈 denotes the set of ∑ ∑
potential FNs where SFFCs (farming services) can be activated to serve 𝑥𝑢𝑣 𝜎𝑣 ≤ 𝑦𝑢𝑖0 𝛷𝑢𝑖 ∀𝑢 ∈ 𝑈 (5)
𝑣∈𝑉 𝑖∈𝐼
farm services. Each 𝑣 ∈ 𝑉 models an SFFC demanded from a farmer
or another stakeholder; in turn, each chain corresponds to one or more Constraints (4) and (5) ensure that the CPU and RAM capacities of
vSFFs with processing (CPU (𝜏)) and memory (𝜎) resources. A demand a primary FN of type 𝑖 be sufficient to process the demands of all the
point is the sum of all resources requested to FNs for activating SFFCs. demand points assigned to it.
FNs are heterogeneous in CPU (𝛹 ) and RAM (𝛷) capacities, reliability
1 − (1 − 𝑟𝑢 )(1 − 𝑟𝑤 ) (6)
rates, and cost. As FNs can fail for several reasons (e.g., unexpected
restart and shutdown, especially for power outages often in developing ∑ ∑
countries farms), each FN 𝑢 ∈ 𝑈 is associated with a reliability value, 𝑟𝑢 , 1 − (1 − 𝑦𝑢𝑖0 𝑟𝑢𝑖 )(1 − 𝑦𝑤𝑖1 𝑟𝑤𝑖 ) ≥ 𝑅𝑣 𝑥𝑢𝑣
which defines its probability of non-failure for a given operation time.
𝑖∈𝐼 𝑖∈𝐼 (7)
The FNs hosting a demand point are categorized either as primary or as ∀𝑢 ∈ 𝑈 , 𝑤 ∈ 𝑈 , 𝑣 ∈ 𝑉
∑ ∑
secondary (i.e., 𝑘 = 0 primary node, 𝑘 = 1 secondary node), depending 1 − (1 − 𝑦𝑢𝑖0 𝑟𝑢𝑖 )(1 − 𝑦𝑤𝑖1 𝑧𝑢𝑤 𝑟𝑤𝑖 ) ≥ 𝑅𝑣 𝑥𝑢𝑣 𝑧𝑢𝑤
on its role in protection. If a primary FN fails, a node assigned as a 𝑖∈𝐼 𝑖∈𝐼 (8)
secondary (backup) hosts the demands of the node in failure. ∀𝑢 ∈ 𝑈 , 𝑤 ∈ 𝑈 , 𝑣 ∈ 𝑉
The primary model goal is to find the optimal allocation of het-
Eqs. (6)–(8) are related to the reliability of the SF deployment.
erogeneous FNs hosting SFFCs meeting reliability while minimizing
A redundant system guarantees that there will be redundant nodes,
deployment costs. We face this objective by formulating an FN allo-
known as backup nodes, reserved to replace primary nodes when
cation problem, which finds the optimal number of FNs to minimize
failures happen. These nodes remain on stand-by until they are needed.
monetary cost given heterogeneous FNs under two protection schemes
Backup nodes operate in parallel; then, as long as not all system com-
(1 ∶ 1 and 1 ∶ 𝑁). The formulation has the following objective function:
ponents fail, the entire SF system works. The constraint that guarantees
∑ ∑∑ reliability in the model is Constraint (8) and follows from the reliability
𝑀𝑖𝑛 𝑓𝑢𝑖 𝑦𝑢𝑖𝑘 (1) of a redundant system. Eq. (6) illustrates the total reliability of a
𝑘∈𝐾 𝑢∈𝑈 𝑖∈𝐼 redundant system with two elements in parallel: 𝑢 and 𝑤 (i.e., primary
The objective function defined by Eq. (1) aims at minimizing the and secondary FNs). Eq. (7) instances Eq. (6) with the decision variables
cost of activating heterogeneous FNs. Note that the higher the number into a constraint that assures the overall reliability level achieved with
of activated FNs (primary and backups), the greater the cost. the implemented protection scheme. This level should be greater than
The constraints of the problem are the following: or equal to 𝑅𝑣; it is the expected reliability level of a demand point
∑ 𝑣 ∈ 𝑉 . Eq. (8) adapts (7) with the decision variable 𝑧𝑢𝑤 that correlates
𝑥𝑢𝑣 = 1 ∀𝑣 ∈ 𝑉 (2)
primary and backup nodes. The left-hand side of the expression verifies
𝑢∈𝑈

5
A.I. Montoya-Munoz et al. Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 200 (2022) 107252

Table 1
Notation used in the FN allocation problem formulation.
Symbol Description
Parameters
𝑈 Set of FNs
𝑉 Set of demanded SFFCs points
𝐼 Index of FN type (i=0 - lowest resources, i=2 - highest resources)
𝑓𝑢𝑖 Fixed cost to activate a FN 𝑢 ∈ 𝑈 of type 𝑖 in USD
𝐾 Level of protection assignment of a FN (k=0 - primary, k=1 - secondary)
𝛹𝑢𝑖 CPU capacity of FN 𝑢 ∈ 𝑈 of type 𝑖 in MIPS
𝛷𝑢𝑖 RAM capacity of FN 𝑢 ∈ 𝑈 of type 𝑖 in GB
𝜏𝑣 Processing (CPU) requirement of a demand point 𝑣 assigned to a FN 𝑢 ∈ 𝑈 in MIPS
𝜎𝑣 Memory (RAM) requirement of a demand point 𝑣 assigned to a FN 𝑢 ∈ 𝑈 in GB
𝑟𝑢𝑖 Reliability of a FN at 𝑢 ∈ 𝑈 of type 𝑖
𝑅𝑣 Required reliability level of a demand point 𝑣 ∈ 𝑉
Decision variables
𝑦𝑢𝑖𝑘 ∈ {0, 1} Value 1 indicates that the FN 𝑢 ∈ 𝑈 of type 𝑖 as 𝑘 assignment (𝑘 = 0 primary node, 𝑘 = 1 secondary node) is active
𝑥𝑢𝑣 ∈ {0, 1} Value 1 indicates that the FN 𝑢 ∈ 𝑈 serves a demand point 𝑣 ∈ 𝑉
𝑧𝑢𝑤 ∈ {0, 1} Value 1 indicates that the secondary node 𝑤 ∈ 𝑈 backing up the primary node 𝑢 ∈ 𝑈 is active

that 𝑦𝑤𝑖1 is the assigned backup of 𝑦𝑢𝑖0 ; the right-hand side checks that Compared to the dedicated scheme, the main disadvantage of the
𝑢 is the assigned FN serving the demand point 𝑣. Summarizing, the shared one is its fewer failure tolerance. Nonetheless, especially for
mathematical model of the dedicated protection scheme is given by low values of 𝑁, several primary FNs would have to fail to prevent
Eqs. (1)–(5) and (8). the demand processing and generate the SF services outages.
The main advantage of the dedicated protection scheme described is
that it provides high reliability by deploying one backup node for each
4.3. Linearization
primary FN. If all primary FNs fail, the backup nodes can be activated,
and demand will be processed. A dedicated scheme implies a high cost
The linearization of Eq. (8) was required to reduce the complexity
of deploying backup resources; this constitutes its main disadvantage.
of the reliability constraint and facilitate the model solution by typical
solvers. To linearize the multiplication between the binary decision
4.2. Secondary Fog Nodes
variables 𝑦𝑤𝑖1 and 𝑧𝑢𝑤 , we defined the auxiliary variable 𝑎𝑢𝑥𝑢𝑖𝑤 :
Next, we extend the formulation presented in the previous subsec- • 𝑎𝑢𝑥𝑢𝑖𝑤 ∈ {0, 1}- the value 1 indicates that the secondary node
tion to furnish a 1 ∶ 1 dedicated protection scheme and a 1 ∶ 𝑁 shared 𝑤 ∈ 𝑈 assigned as 𝑘 = 1 is active and is backing up the FN 𝑢 ∈ 𝑈
protection scheme to mitigate the impact of failures of the heteroge- of type 𝑖.
neous FNs on service provisioning. Under a dedicated protection model,
if a primary node fails, its SFFCs are assigned to a dedicated backup on The following new equations are introduced:
a different FN of the same type. The backup nodes serve as dedicated
2 × 𝑎𝑢𝑥𝑢𝑖𝑤 ≤ 𝑦𝑤𝑖1 + 𝑧𝑢𝑤 ∀𝑢 ∈ 𝑈 , 𝑖 ∈ 𝐼, 𝑤 ∈ 𝑈 (13)
facilities. In shared protection, if one FN fails, its SFFCs are assigned to
a secondary FN shared by 𝑁 < |𝑈 | primary FNs. For instance, if 𝑁 = 2,
the primary FN100 of type 0 is serving the SFFCs (demand points) 1 and 𝑦𝑤𝑖1 + 𝑧𝑢𝑤 − 1 ≤ 𝑎𝑢𝑥𝑢𝑖𝑤 ∀𝑢 ∈ 𝑈 , 𝑖 ∈ 𝐼, 𝑤 ∈ 𝑈 (14)
7, and the primary FN310 of type 1 is serving the demand point 3, the
∑ ∑
secondary FN521 of type 2 can be the shared backup of both FN100 and 1 − (1 − 𝑦𝑢𝑖0 𝑟𝑢𝑖 )(1 − 𝑎𝑢𝑥𝑢𝑖𝑤 𝑟𝑤𝑖 ) ≥ 𝑅𝑣 𝑥𝑢𝑣 𝑧𝑢𝑤
FN310 , and will process the demand points of the first node that fails. 𝑖∈𝐼 𝑖∈𝐼 (15)
The following constraints extend the model to provide 1 ∶ 𝑁 ∀𝑢 ∈ 𝑈 , 𝑤 ∈ 𝑈 , 𝑣 ∈ 𝑉
protection.
∑ ∑ Eqs. (13) and (14) guarantee the correct value of 𝑎𝑢𝑥𝑢𝑖𝑤 . Constraint
𝑧𝑢𝑤 = 𝑦𝑢𝑖0 ∀𝑢 ∈ 𝑈 (9) (15) replaces Eq. (8) in our model, the left-hand side checks if the reli-
𝑤∈𝑈 𝑖∈𝐼 ability rate of the primary nodes (𝑘 = 0) and correspondent secondary
∑
𝑧𝑢𝑤 ≤ 𝑁 ∀𝑤 ∈ 𝑈 (10) nodes (𝑘 = 1) protection schemes are enough to meet the reliability
𝑢∈𝑈 demanded. In turn, the right-hand side verifies that the reliability of
Constraint (9) indicates that a backup node is assigned for each the demand point 𝑣 is ensured by the actives primary and secondary
primary active FN. Constraint (10) indicates that a backup FN can node 𝑢 and 𝑤.
replace 𝑁 ≤ |𝑈 | potential primary nodes. If 𝑁 = 1, the protection We also linearized the multiplication between the decision variables
scheme becomes dedicated. 𝑦𝑢𝑖𝑘 and 𝑧𝑢𝑤 in Eqs. (11) and (12). Taking into account that all the deci-
∑ ∑ sion variables are binaries, we can describe Eq. (11) as Eq. (16) where
𝑧𝑢𝑤 𝑦𝑢𝑖0 𝛹𝑢𝑖 ≤ 𝑧𝑢𝑤 𝑦𝑤𝑖1 𝛹𝑤𝑖 ∀𝑢 ∈ 𝑈 𝑤 ∈ 𝑈 (11) the left-hand side of the bracket is the difference in CPU capacities
𝑖∈𝐼 𝑖∈𝐼
∑ ∑ between the backup and primary node.
𝑧𝑢𝑤 𝑦𝑢𝑖0 𝛷𝑢𝑖 ≤ 𝑧𝑢𝑤 𝑦𝑤𝑖1 𝛷𝑤𝑖 ∀𝑢 ∈ 𝑈 𝑤 ∈ 𝑈 (12) {
𝑖∈𝐼 𝑖∈𝐼
∑ ∑ ≥0 if 𝑧𝑢𝑤 = 1
𝑦𝑤𝑖1 𝛹𝑤𝑖 − 𝑦𝑢𝑖0 𝛹𝑢𝑖 (16)
Constraints (11) and (12) ensure that the CPU and RAM capacities 𝑖∈𝐼 𝑖∈𝐼 any value if 𝑧𝑢𝑤 = 0
of a secondary FN 𝑤 ∈ 𝑈 of type 𝑖 are sufficient to replace the protected The lowest possible value of this difference is −𝛹𝑚𝑎𝑥 where 𝛹𝑚𝑎𝑥 is
primary FN 𝑢 ∈ 𝑈 . the highest possible CPU capacity in the model. Since 𝛹𝑚𝑎𝑥 is a known
The most significant advantage of the shared protection scheme is value, then:
related to the SF’s deployment costs reduction when multiple demands {
can share backup FNs, especially for high values of 𝑁. This finding ∑ ∑ ≥0 if 𝑧𝑢𝑤 = 1
𝑦𝑤𝑖1 𝛹𝑤𝑖 − 𝑦𝑢𝑖0 𝛹𝑢𝑖 (17)
is relevant for deploying FC-based smart farms with a limited budget. 𝑖∈𝐼 𝑖∈𝐼 ≥ −𝛹𝑚𝑎𝑥 if 𝑧𝑢𝑤 = 0

6
A.I. Montoya-Munoz et al. Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 200 (2022) 107252

Table 2
Types of demands.
Demand CPU (MIPS) RAM (GB) Potential FNs (𝑈 )
Low 1–1240 0.01–0.5 30
Medium 1240–2460 0.5–1 50
High 2460–3680 1–2 60
All 1–3680 0.01–2 40

Table 3
Node type description.
Type CPU (MIPS) RAM (GB) Reliability Price (USD)
0 1240 0.5 0.50 20
1 2460 1 0.60 45
2 3680 2 0.70 70

𝛹𝑢𝑖 , 𝛷𝑢𝑖 , and 𝑟𝑢 model the FNs. The values of the set 𝑉 and constants
𝜏𝑣 , 𝜎𝑣 , and 𝑅𝑣 model the SFFCs.
After all the values are defined, it is necessary to obtain an exact
solution using a solver (Step 4). Then, the values of the decision
variables (𝑦𝑢𝑖𝑘 , 𝑥𝑢𝑣 , and 𝑧𝑢𝑤 ) are obtained, which represent the final
solution (Step 5). Finally, in Step 6, the values of the decision variables
are used to define which FNs will be activated, their type and role
(primary or secondary node), and determine what FN will be in charge
of processing what SFFC.

5. Evaluation

This section presents the proposed model evaluation intended to

compare the costs of dedicated and shared protection schemes and
Fig. 5. Flowchart of the steps to obtain the solution to the FC-based SF. assess their reliability. Section 5.1 describes the experimental setup
adopted, and Section 5.2 discusses the numerical results.

Meaning that: 5.1. Experiment setup

∑ ∑
𝑦𝑤𝑖1 𝛹𝑤𝑖 − 𝑦𝑢𝑖0 𝛹𝑢𝑖 ≥ −(1 − 𝑧𝑢𝑤 )𝛹𝑚𝑎𝑥 (18) It is essential to remark that the model presented in this paper is
𝑖∈𝐼 𝑖∈𝐼
generic entirely and highlight that we evaluated the proposed model
∑ ∑
𝑦𝑤𝑖1 𝛹𝑤𝑖 − 𝑦𝑢𝑖0 𝛹𝑢𝑖 ≥ (𝑧𝑢𝑤 − 1)𝛹𝑚𝑎𝑥 (19) with information obtained from an actual Colombia FC-based Smart
𝑖∈𝐼 𝑖∈𝐼 Farm that follows the architecture shown in Fig. 1. Table 2 presents
Thus, Eq. (11) is updated by Eq. (20). Similarly, Eq. (12) is updated the parameters that define the CPU and RAM capabilities per type
by Eq. (21). Constraints (20) and (21) state that the CPU and RAM of demand, as well as the corresponding reliability requirements and
capacities of a backup node 𝑤 ∈ 𝑈 are at least the same as its primary prices. In the experimentation, we differentiated low, medium, and
node. The values 𝛹𝑚𝑎𝑥 and 𝛷𝑚𝑎𝑥 represent the largest CPU and RAM high demand points, plus a category that includes all classes. We did
capacities, respectively. it since each farm’s supply chain has stages with specific needs and
∑ ∑ hence, diverse capabilities requirements according to SFFCs to execute
𝑦𝑤𝑖1 𝛹𝑤𝑖 − 𝑦𝑢𝑖0 𝛹𝑢𝑖 ≥ 𝛹𝑚𝑎𝑥 𝑧𝑢𝑤 − 𝛹𝑚𝑎𝑥 ∀𝑢 ∈ 𝑈 , 𝑤 ∈ 𝑈 (20) (e.g., production forecasting requires more computational capabilities
𝑖∈𝐼 𝑖∈𝐼
than the ground temperature monitoring of crops). Also, for experi-
∑ ∑
𝑦𝑤𝑖1 𝛷𝑤𝑖 − 𝑦𝑢𝑖0 𝛷𝑢𝑖 ≥ 𝛷𝑚𝑎𝑥 𝑧𝑢𝑤 − 𝛷𝑚𝑎𝑥 ∀𝑢 ∈ 𝑈 , 𝑤 ∈ 𝑈 (21) mentation, we distributed the demands of CPU and RAM uniformly.
𝑖∈𝐼 𝑖∈𝐼 Table 3 presents the heterogeneous FNs used in the experiments, each
node type classified by CPU and RAM capabilities, reliability rate, and
4.4. Applying the solution price. We distinguished three types of FNs based on devices commonly
instanced in an SF deployment, such as Raspberry Pi (zero, 3B+, and
Fig. 5 depicts the process to follow for employing the proposed 4B models). The evaluation network infrastructure included between
optimization model in real SFs. The process includes several steps: 30 and 60 potential FNs nodes as well as 30 demand points in all cases
identify SFFCs and FNs, define the protection scheme, map SFFCs (i.e., 𝑉 = 30).
and FNs to the constants of the model, solve the exact model, obtain The formulation presented in Section 4 was coded and implemented
values of decision variables, and activate the corresponding backing up by gurobipy, a Python3-based Gurobi implementation (Gurobi Opti-
resources. mization, LLC and Python Software Foundation, 2021). Gurobi is a
Once the smart farm is prepared to receive the FC infrastructure, mathematical solver for linear programming, quadratic programming,
all SFFCs and their characteristics (Step 1) must be determined. For and mixed programming problems (Gurobi Optimization, LLC, 2021).
FNs, the characteristics to identify are their maximum number, costs,
CPU and RAM capacities, and reliability. For SFFCs, it is necessary 5.2. Results and analysis
to identify the required CPU, RAM, and reliability. The mentioned
characteristics’ data allow defining whether to employ the dedicated This section presents and analyzes the numerical results of the linear
or the shared scheme (Step 2) and establish the numerical values used programming model introduced in this paper. We analyze two metrics:
in the formulation (Step 3). The values of the set 𝑈 and constants 𝑓𝑢𝑖 , cost and number of activated FNs, both presented as a function of the

7
A.I. Montoya-Munoz et al.
Fig. 6. Price vs. Reliability Demand.
minimum required reliability. These metrics are shown for all demand
scenarios (low, medium, high, and all) to show how the demands
impact the final deployment. This evaluation considered FC-based SF
scenarios requiring reliability levels from 10% to 90%. The reliability
rate indicates the probability that a device operates during a year.
Fig. 6 shows the results obtained for the cost metric as a function of
the required reliability level. We evaluated 1 ∶ 𝑁 protection schemes
for 𝑁 values ranging from 1 to 9. The impact of 𝑁 for all demand
scenarios is as follows. For greater values of 𝑁, fewer physical re-
sources are required due to more shared backup nodes, reducing the
deployment price. Therefore, the dedicated protection scheme is the
most expensive. If 𝑁 increases, the price reduces, but backup nodes
will cover fewer primary FNs. Remarkably, for the shared scheme,
the price in function of reliability has the same trend for any value
of 𝑁. Moreover, the price difference decreases slightly for 𝑁 > 3.
Results in Fig. 6 also evince the effect of the required reliability on the
deployment. For low demand points (Fig. 6(a)), the price is constant
for 𝑁 ≤ 70%, meaning that the cheapest deployment can guarantee
at least 70% reliability. Recall that the cheapest FN equipment has a
reliability rate of 50% (Table 3); if both primary and backup nodes are
of this type, achieving redundancy reliability of 0.75 is possible, enough
to meet the reliability demands from 10% to 70%. For medium and all
demand points (Figs. 6(b) and 6(d)), this threshold is higher (80%) due
to the higher demands of SFFCs that require better equipment, even
under lower reliability requirements. Likewise, under high demands
(Fig. 6(c)), high CPU and RAM capabilities are needed, requiring
powerful hardware that already provides high reliability. Consequently,
the cost does not vary in function of the reliability demand. The
ratio between the costs required for 10% and 90% reliability is quite
different in different scenarios. For low demand points (Fig. 6(a)), a cost
higher (21 to 28%) is necessary to achieve 90% reliability, but such an
increase is only about 9% for medium demand points (Fig. 6(b)), and
less than 3% for all demand points (Fig. 6(d)). This trend shows that
high reliability has a much more significant effect on scenarios with
lower demands, given that more expensive equipment to deal with high
demands is usually already designed to provide better reliability.
Fig. 7 shows the number of activated FNs as a function of the
required reliability level for different demands and 𝑁 values equal to
8
Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 200 (2022) 107252
1, 2, and 3. The graphics disclose the activated primary and secondary
node types in all the protection schemes; results were clustered with the
same distribution per reliability rate to improve the readability. These
clustering results correspond with the price graphs: when the price is
constant over the reliability rates, the model finds the same optimal
distribution of the FNs. Each cluster has results for different protection
scheme levels (𝑁). Several factors affect the number of activated nodes:
demand, the value of 𝑁, and required reliability. First, higher demands
require better resources, but they can also activate more nodes to serve
multiple farms. Therefore, low demands (Fig. 7(a)) require less than 30
FNs, while high demands (Fig. 7(c)) can require up to 60 active nodes.
Second, higher values of 𝑁 allow more sharing of resources, reducing
the number of hardware equipment. For example, under high demands
(Fig. 7(c)), 30 primary nodes are employed regardless of the required
reliability. However, for 𝑁 = 1, 30 backup nodes are activated, one
for each primary node, but only 10 nodes are needed for 𝑁 = 3.
Third, higher values of reliability tend to activate fewer nodes, which
is more evident for low demands (Fig. 7(a)). The variations in capacity
and price justify these rather contradictory results. When reliability
increases, better hardware is needed, raising the infrastructure costs.
However, more expensive hardware offers more CPU and memory
capabilities, reducing the number of devices yet increasing costs. The
type of FNs also varied for different deployments. The most basic FN
hardware, type 0, was only employed in scenarios with low demands
(Fig. 7(a)), which shows that FN deployments with high computational
and reliability demands rely on more powerful and expensive hard-
ware. Moreover, the backup nodes usually have the same type as their
corresponding primary node.
6. Conclusion and future work
This paper introduced an optimization model that considers re-
dundancy techniques, deployment cost minimization, and reliability
constraints for protecting FC-based SF. We evaluated the proposed
model performance in several smart farms scenarios considering several
types of demand (low, medium, and high), parameters of IoT/Fog
devices commonly instanced in SF deployments, and two redundancy
A.I. Montoya-Munoz et al.
Fig. 7. Number of Fog Nodes vs. Reliability Demand.
schemes: (i) 1 ∶ 1, a dedicated backup node for each service demand;
and (ii) 1 ∶ 𝑁, a backup node for each 𝑁 potential primary nodes.
The main findings are summarized as follows. First, protection schemes
guarantee high reliability and, consequently, improve the operation
of FC-based SF. Second, when backup nodes are shared, the cost
associated with the FN infrastructure can be significantly reduced, yet
providing good reliability. Third, the price has a more significant varia-
tion on high-reliability demands due to the parameter setting of the FN
types. Fourth, the type of demand has a notable impact on the deploy-
ment, significantly increasing required resources and the cost. Fifth,
a secondary node should be shared by a maximum of three primary
ones since the difference in price deployment is insignificant for 𝑁 > 3
compared to the potential lack of protection of nodes without backups.
Sixth, the heterogeneity in FNs impacts scenarios with low demands
significantly. For large farms where the services demands are usually
high, more powerful hardware covers the computational and reliability
needs at once. Nevertheless, it could be cheaper for small farms with
low-demand tasks to deploy low-resource than high-resource hardware
when the reliability demanded is fewer than 70%.
We plan to perform multi-objective formulation to optimize en-
ergy consumption, latency, and node location in the model for future
work. Also, we want to solve the optimization problem by using ML
techniques.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Ana Isabel Montoya-Munoz: Conceptualization, Methodology,
Software, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Data
curation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing,
Visualization. Rodrigo A.C. da Silva: Software, Validation, Formal
analysis, Resources, Data curation, Writing – review & editing. Oscar
M. Caicedo Rendon: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation,
Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Writing – original draft,
Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Project administration,
9
Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 200 (2022) 107252
Funding acquisition. Nelson L.S. da Fonseca: Conceptualization,
Methodology, Validation, Resources, Writing – original draft, Writing
– review & editing, Supervision, Project administration, Funding
acquisition.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to
influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Innovacción-Cauca (SGR-Colombia) under project
‘‘Alternativas Innovadoras de Agricultura Inteligente para sistemas
productivos agrícolas del departamento del Cauca soportado en en-
tornos de IoT ID 4633-Convocatoria 04C-2018 Banco de Proyectos
Conjuntos UEES-Sostenibilidad’’, the Telematics Engineering research
Group (GIT) of the Universidad del Cauca, and TECNICAFÉ, the Sao
Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP-Brazil) for grant 2015/24494-8.
All authors approved the version of the manuscript to be published.
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