Publish-Pay-Subscribe Protocol for Payment-driven Edge Computing

IoT applications are starting to rely heavily on edge computing due to the advent of low-power and high data-rate wireless communication technologies such as 5G and the processing capability of GPU-driven edge platforms. However, the computation and the data communication model for the edge computing applications are quite diverse, which limits their interoperability. An interoperable edge computing architecture with a versatile communication model would lead to the development of innovative and incentive-driven edge computing applications by combining various data sources from a wide array of devices. In this paper, we present an edge computing architecture by extending the publish-subscribe protocol with support for incentives. Our novel publish-pay-subscribe protocol enables the data producers (publishers) to sell their data with data consumers and service providers (subscribers). The proposed architecture not only allows the device owners to gain incentive but also enable the service providers to sell the processed data with one or more data consumers. Our proof-of-concept implementation using AEDES publish-subscribe broker and Ethereum cryptocurrency shows the feasibility of publish-pay-subscribe broker and its support for data-driven and incentive-based edge computing applications.