IoT

The context aware, on-demand and distributed nature of next generation applications designed for Mobile-Cloud and Internet of Things scenarios, puts high pressure on devices and infrastructure due to sheer amount of generated traffic while simultaneously requiring even lower response latencies for their interactive nature. The resource contraints in temrs of computation, storage, I/O extension, etc are inherent to the mobile and end-user devices and pose additional challenges to meet above demands. We are exploring the provisioning and use of emerging 'Edge Cloud' tier situated only 1 physical hop away from end user devices (e.g., traditional PCs, homeservers, Wi-Fi routers, Small Cells etc.), which can be provisioned seamlessly on-demand by the backend cloud or by end user devices in ad-hoc manner via device discovery.

A Metadata Based Programmable File System

File system interfaces have remained remarkably unchanged throughout the computing era. The stability and simplicity of the commonly used interface of modern file systems has created consistent and performance oriented environments on which other applications may be layered. Using hierarchical organizational representations of stored content, users can easily navigate and manage large numbers of files using the current command line and graphical interfaces. However, users and applications are more interested in the information that can be retrieved from the data, leading to data quality checks being an important requirement in the contemporary file systems especially for scientific data sets. Additionally, in the age of distributed computing better metadata management is required to organize files across several devices while maintaining relevant information for interfacing.The proposed Khan file system aims to solve these issues surrounding data quality and organization of rich metadata information in a distributed world. Using unique directory structures, intelligent metadata management and a semantic approach, Khan builds upon other file systems to solve problems in the ubiquitous computing age. Goals addressed by Khan include determining data quality using user-defined parameters, interfacing and organization of the files from interactions with new stores like the cloud and mobile devices and remaining extensible for future needs while retaining and improving upon the performance characteristics of contemporary file system.