Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on
Automation & Computing, University of Huddersfield,
Huddersfield, UK, 7-8 September 2017
OptiSEC: In Search of an Optimal Sensor Cloud
Architecture
Muhammad Usman Atif
Department of Computer Science
COMSATS Institute of Information Technology
Islamabad, Pakistan
kakul124@live.com
Abstract— The Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are widely
being used for monitoring different environments and are very
effective for monitoring those areas where human presence can be
critical. Meanwhile, Cloud Computing (CC) has emerged as a very
large scale computational and storage service with pay-as-you-go
usage model which has taken the WSN to entirely a new paradigm.
This integration of WSN with CC provides the advantage of both
technologies in shape of sensor cloud (SC). In this paper, our
contribution is twofold. Firstly, we provide a comprehensive
survey of Sensor-Cloud (SC) architectures proposed over the
period 2010-2016 and categorized them into four key factors.
Secondly, we propose OptiSeC (optimal sensor cloud architecture)
which is composed of efficiency, security, performance and data
management, which must be present in any SC architecture.
Furthermore, we predict the future and forecast the data growth
in OptiSeC till year 2022.
Keywords—WSN; Cloud Computing; Sensor-Cloud, Optimal
Sensor Cloud;
I. INTRODUCTION
With the emergence of Internet of Things (IoT), many
technologies relating to IoT also evolved [1]. Out of many
technologies the two most important technologies are Cloud
Computing (CC) and Wireless Sensor Network (WSN). A WSN
is a large network of nodes deployed in a certain area for event
monitoring/sensing [2]. Event can be traffic monitoring,
surveillance, healthcare services like patient monitoring,
automatic packing monitoring in factory, flood, climate change,
etc. [3]. CC means using a large number of services remotely not
locally. CC focuses on using any kind of service on demand
which means one has to pay according to the use of that service.
Services may include Software as a Service (SaaS) means no
need to install a software just get internet connection and use
that software remotely, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) means
no need to arrange hundred or thousand devices to run a software
for testing and analyzing purposes just use this service remotely
to get the job done, Platform as a Service (PaaS) means no need
to install or arrange machines having different platforms just use
this service to run your application on different platforms [4],
[5]. Despite of having so much advantages of WSN some
disadvantages also exists. WSN nodes are very small in size,
they also have limited power source, limited processing speed
and limited storage capacity resulting a lot of data went un-
processed or un-stored. Sometimes it’s also required to access
important data gathered by nodes, remotely. By integrating CC
Munam Ali Shah
Department of Computer Science
COMSATS Institute of Information Technology
Islamabad, Pakistan
mshah@comsats.edu.pk
with WSN we can overcome all these limitations. Cloud offers
a lot of storage capacity to sensors plus the fast computational
power. An integrated version was proposed with the name of
Sensor-Cloud (SC) that combines all the advantages of WSN
and CC eliminating the limitations of WSN [6]–[9].
The existing literature clearly lacks in providing a
comprehensive survey of SC architecture. In this paper, a critical
analysis of different SC architectures is presented. Section II
briefly investigates the features that must include in an optimal
SC architecture. In Section III, the related work is categorized
according to the four key factors of our proposed OptiSeC
architecture and a novel taxonomy diagram is also constructed
at the end. The SC architectures listed in Section III are
evaluated in Section IV in tabular form under four key factors of
OptiSeC and a valuable graph about market shares of data
growth is computed at the end of this section. Finally, the paper
is concluded along future direction in Section V.
II. OPTISC FEATURES
Due to constant increase in IoT devices, issues like energy
efficiency, data management and security are of key
importance. Most of current SC architectures only focus on
individual problems like security, energy efficiency, and data
management etc. and are unable to eliminate all above said
issues. For example, a paper providing security mechanism but
lacking in energy efficiency can be a security overhead. After
detail study of related papers and keeping in mind the cons of
WSN and pros of Cloud, we agreed that an optimal sensor cloud
must have following characteristics:
A. Efficiency_ SC must be efficient in sense of energy, cost,
storage and resource. Because it will help the sensor nodes
to increase their lifetime. If the cost is less, then clients with
low budget will also be able to use it. Less resource hungry
integration will also increase the efficiency. These
efficiency parameters closely relate to each other as a
resource efficient architecture may also aid in energy and
cost efficiency.
B. Security_ No matter how good the integration is but if there
is no security provided then it’s unreliable. Because if data
is sensed and transmitted to cloud in a secure manner then
users will be able to retrieve a more reliable data from the
cloud.
 C. Performance_ This characteristic is a little bit vast as it
includes robustness means in any circumstances it must not
stop working, scalability means its size can be easily
increased or decreased and most importantly the routing
strategy means there must be an optimal routing strategy
be used so that the transmission delay may be as minimum
as possible.
D. Data Management_ Sensors produce huge amount of data
so it’s very important to manage this data otherwise either
we may loss important data or we may gather useless data.
So data processing, filtration, data traffic and delivery
management must be implemented in order to sense and
transmit useful data to end users.
III. RELATED WORK
Different SC architectures have been investigated thoroughly.
This section briefly inspects four key factors of OptiSeC.
A. Efficiency
An efficient SC architecture deals with energy, cost,
storage and location awareness factors that’s why they are
part of OptiSeC. Discussion regarding the integration of
light weight sensors with hybrid cloud is made in [11].
Connection of WSN API with three cloud services is
discussed in [13]. In [14], [15] the authors proposed
integration of Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) with
WSN. Papers [17], [18] propose a framework of
transmitting sensory data in a fast, reliable and secure
manner to mobile users. A flexible integration of WSN
with cloud is explained in [19], [20]. Paper [21], proposes
a SC architecture that delivers secure, fast and reliable data
in a cost effective manner. In [23] an energy efficient SC
architecture CEB (cloud, edge and beneath) is proposed.
Paper [31] proposes a new localization algorithm named
Centroid Localization Algorithm which is the enhanced
version of Malguki. Authors of paper [33] proposed a
novel Distributed Multicast and Minimum Transmission
Routing Algorithm (DMTMRA). A novel architecture of
SC in which Cloud is used as a virtual sink for collecting
data is proposed in [34]. User will get reliable data if WSN
sense and deliver reliable data to cloud, Keeping this thing
in mind paper [36] proposes TPSS architecture.
B. Security
Today there is more and more emphasize on security
of data, that’s why security is an important factor of
OptiSeC. In [10] the author proposed pub-sub architecture
for WSN and cloud integration in which user can access
the data in a secure manner for various purposes. The
author proposed a secured integration of WSN with cloud
by implementing activity monitoring engine in [11]. Papers
[17], [18] propose a framework of transmitting sensory
data in a fast, reliable and secure manner to mobile users.
Paper [21], proposes a SC architecture that delivers secure,
fast and reliable data in a cost effective manner. A trust
based Trust Management strategy to enhance data security
and processing in SC is discussed in [24]. A new military
based SC architecture named Mils-Cloud is proposed in
[26]. Authors proposed a novel Trust and Reputation
based SC architecture in [27], [28]. Author in [30] deals
with security issue of SC in terms of SC3 (secured
integration with CC for u-life care). An innovative
architecture solving issues like scalability, security and
availability is presented in [32]. Reference [35] proposes
MSCC (mobile sensor cloud computing) framework and
provides security mechanism. In [37], an efficient and
secured multicast approach is proposed which combines
the Group Key and Time Key with the name CoGKTK.
C. Performance
Performance is another key factor of our OptiSeC that
includes robustness, scalability and routing mechanisms.
In [14], [15] the authors proposed integration of mobile
cloud computing (MCC) with WSN by providing location
based sleep schedule of sensors. The integration of WSN
with CC is proposed in [16] that uses amazon web service
EC2 (elastic compute cloud) as cloud that allows to
dynamically increase the computational resources. Papers
[17], [18] propose a framework of transmitting sensory
data in a fast, reliable and secure manner to mobile users.
Paper [29] deals with job scheduling topic of SC. Authors
of paper [33] proposed a novel distributed multicast and
minimum transmission routing algorithm (DMTMRA). A
novel architecture of SC in which cloud is used as a virtual
sink for collecting data is proposed in [34].
D. Data Management
With growing technologies, a large amount of data is
also producing. That’s why data management is also a key
part of OptiSeC. Papers [17], [18] propose a framework of
transmitting sensory data in a fast, reliable and secure
manner. In [21] a SC architecture that delivers secure, fast
and reliable data by providing proper data processing and
management services is proposed. Paper [22] uses pipes
and filters where pipes buffer the sensed data and provide
this data from output port to filters which eliminate the
noise from data. In [29], data volume issue in large scale
SC is discussed along with data representation, indexing,
processing and querying. Authors proposed a novel trust
and reputation based SC architecture in [22], [23] so that
users can get appropriate and error free data. The approach
that is proposed in [27] not only increases reliability in data
delivery but also provide secure data transmission.
We categories papers and create a novel taxonomy diagram in
Figure 1.
IV. P ERFORMANCE EVALUATION
All the papers described in Section III are evaluated on the
basic of four key factor of our proposed SC architecture that are
efficiency, security, performance and data management and
shown in Table 1. Michael Dell says, the market shares of data
growth are increasing about 23.1% every year and will reach
$48.6 billion in 2019. The statistical data obtained from [38]
has been computed and a forecast for the year up to 2022 has
been plotted in Figure 2.
 TABLE I. COMPARISON ON THE BASIS OF KEY FACTORS

Papers Efficiency Security Performance Data Management

DPU (data processing unit),

[10] Not handled IAMU (identity and access Not handles Not handles
management unit)
activity monitoring, filtration
[11] Not handles manager, query/response Not handled Not handled
manager
Light weight sensors,
[12] eucalyptus (hybrid cloud). Not handled Not handled Not handled
amazon web service
Arduino with WSN api,
[13] Nimbits, ThingSpeak, Open Not handled Not handled Not handled
Sen.se (as cloud)
Location based sleep Location based sleep
[14][15] schedule for sensors Not handled schedule for sensors Not handled
providing energy saving providing robustness
Amazon elastic compute
[16] Not handled Not handled Not handled
cloud (ECC), load balancing
Cloud based data processing RSA for encryption, access Data traffic monitoring, data Huffman for data
[17][18]
prolong the lifetime security filtration compression, data prediction
REST web service, cyclic
[19][20] sleep for sensors, Not handled Not handled Not handled
Open.Sen.se cloud
Local data filtration Symmetric key cryptography for BigQuery, Data hashing, etc
[21] Not handled
increases sensors lifetime encryption for data management
Pipes and filters used to
[22] Not handled Not handled Not handled
buffer and filter data
PPE (pull push envelop),
[23] deals with demand and Not handled Not handled Not handled
supply rate
Trust based, long term
[24] Not handled Not handled Not handled
reputation, short term risks
[25] Not handled Not handled Not handled Hadoop, Map Reduce,
RDBMS, NoSql
Sensor network controller,
[26] Not handled sensor cloud scheduler, Not handled Not handled
application manager
Calculates trust and reputation Provides trusted data to
[27][28] Not handled Not handled cloud users
values
Priority based two phase
[29] Not handled Not handled Min-min and max min, ECT Not handled
(expected completion time)
Group based trust management,
[30] Not handled passive acknowledgement to set Not handled Not handled
trust value
Centroid localization
[31] algorithm (enhancement of Not handled Not handled Not handled
Malguki)
Attribute based encryption, RSK
[32] Not handled Not handled Not handled
(random symmetric key)
Distributed multicast to save Minimum transmission
[33] Not handled Not handled
energy routing for efficiency
Cloud as virtual sink and Decreasing the error rate in
[34] Not handled Not handled
WSN divided into zones packet transmission
Secured MSCC (mobile sensor
[35] Not handled Not handled Not handled
cloud computing)
PSS (priority based sleep
[36] schedule), TPSDT (selective Not handled Not handled Not handled
data transmission)
Combination of group key and Content based multicast
[37] Not handled Not handled
time key (CoGKTK) pub/sub system
 Data Growth Analysis
84.5

Billion Dollar
72.5

60.5

48.5

36.5

24.5

12.5

0.5
2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022
Current 16.996 22.101
Increase 22.101 28.74 37.373 48.6 59.827 71.054 82.281
Decrease 22.101 16.996 13.07 10.051 7.032 4.013 0.994
Average 22.101 22.101 22.101 22.101 22.101 22.101 22.101

Fig. 2 Forcast for Data Growth Market Shares

V. CONCLUSIONS 330–342, 2010.

This paper is a comprehensive survey of SC architectures
proposed during the period of 2010-2016. Firstly, the
introduction of WSN and cloud is presented. After examining
WSN limitations, we discussed SC architecture. Critical
analysis of different SC architectures yield four main
characteristics of an optimal SC architecture that must be base
of any SC architecture. This analysis will help the researchers
to develop a SC architecture that can be efficient in terms of
energy, resource, cost and resource, that can provide security
not only to end users but also to data travelling from sensors to
cloud, that can be easily scalable and lastly that can manage
large amount of data produced by sensors and provide it
efficient route to the cloud. In future, we aim to further
investigate the deployment challenges of SC architectures in
real environment.
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