Analyzing the Applicability of a Multi-Criteria Decision Method in Fog Computing Placement Problem

In Fog computing the placement selection of services in network devices with computational and storage features is an NP-hard problem. We analyse the design of Fog scenarios and the placement problem using Electre III a multi-criteria decision method for outranking alternatives. In this study, we model a Fog environment to apply a decision model for determining which alternatives are the most suitable in each application deployment. We compare the results with the weighted average to analyse the applicability of Electre III method in the Fog placement problem. We design a dynamical scenario in which new users appear along the simulation and we use the latency, hop count, cost, deployment penalty and energy consumption criteria to rank placement alternatives. This approach enables the study of how the characteristics of the resources have to be distributed, that is, how to design Fog scenarios, in order to make the allocation of applications more efficient.