Cloud-based virtualization environment for IoT-based WSN: solutions, approaches and challenges

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.