Ovcosim: an open-source versatile computation offloading simulator for cloud and fog computing

Offloading computation-intensive tasks of an application from a mobile device to a remote computation resource can improve the runtime of the application as well as improve the lifetime of the mobile device’s battery. However, computation offloading is a complex endeavour: remote computation resources in the cloud and in the fog have different computation capabilities and costs, and the network bandwidth and latency between different resources need to be taken into account. In addition, the mobile device would ideally like to offload multiple applications simultaneously, further adding to the complexity of assigning different tasks of each application to available computation resources. In this paper, we introduce an open-source versatile computation offloading simulator (OVCOSim), capable of simulating and optimizing offloading multiple applications to different cloud and fog resources and visualizing the outcome for users. We demonstrate how OVCOSim can be used to optimize assignment of tasks to computation resources to accommodate different user objectives, runtime, battery life, cost, or a combination of these objectives, using a variety of assignment algorithms. We also provide several examples to demonstrate how OVCOSim can be used, as well as validate its functionality.