Harnessing idle edge resources for execution of cloud services: A comprehensive review

Abstract

This article presents a comprehensive investigation into voluntary resource sharing at the edge of the internet for cloud service execution. Through a systematic review, 460 scientific articles published between 2019 and 2023 were analyzed, compiling the primary recent contributions in the field. The study presents a taxonomy of the results and highlights the state of the art. Despite the growing interest in the topic in recent years due to the expansion of Edge and Fog Computing, numerous challenges and open research gaps were identified for the effective utilization of idle resources for cloud service execution at the edge. This paper delves into these challenges, emphasizing the need for extensive research in areas such as resource management, interoperability, incentive model establishment, and security and privacy concerns.