Fog-based file sharing scheme for efficient file management in PAN

Abstract

In a Personal Area Network (PAN) populated with wearable devices, the security of stored files is an important concern. Secret sharing has received considerable attention as an effective approach for handling security as it guarantees confidentiality and integrity. A high level of data privacy is still assured when devices are compromised, lost, or stolen, and even in cases where the total count of these devices is less than the minimum threshold. However, because traditional secret sharing requires tremendous computational overhead and consumes large storage space, it is suboptimal for battery-powered wearable devices. To overcome these limitations, combinatorial-based file sharing is proposed. However, this approach is also hindered by an efficiency problem, because the preparation of file storage and retrieval involves computational costs. Additionally, this file sharing scheme was designed without taking into consideration an environment with heterogeneous wearable devices. To address the aforementioned problems, we first propose a new fog network model that delegates the calculation for the preparation of file storage and retrieval to a fog node, such as a smartphone or tablet PC. A fog node has comparatively higher computational speed, and a larger battery capacity; hence, the resources of the devices in the PAN can be managed efficiently. Additionally, we propose a new algorithm that facilitates file shares by considering the heterogeneous characteristics of wearable devices. In particular, we consider the factors of storage capacity and network speed to determine the size of the file shares. We use mathematical analysis and simulations to demonstrate that our proposed model efficiently manages stored files.