In-depth analysis and open challenges of Mist Computing

The advent and consolidation of the Massive Internet of Things (MIoT) comes with a need for new architectures to process the massive amount of generated information. A new approach, Mist Computing, entails a series of changes compared to previous computing paradigms, such as Cloud and Fog Computing, with regard to extremely low latency, local smart processing, high mobility, and massive deployment of heterogeneous devices. Hence, context awareness use cases will be enabled, which will vigorously promote the implementation of advantageous Internet of Things applications. Mist Computing is expected to reach existing fields, such as Industry 4.0, future 6G networks and Big Data problems, and it may be the answer for advanced applications where interaction with the environment is essential and lots of data are managed. Despite the low degree of maturity, it shows plenty of potential for IoT together with Cloud, Fog, and Edge Computing, but it is required to reach a general agreement about its foundations, scope, and fields of action according to the existing early works. In this paper, (i) an extensive review of proposals focused on Mist Computing is done to determine the application fields and network elements that must be developed for certain objectives, besides, (ii) a comparative assessment between Cloud, Fog, Edge, and Mist is completed and (iii) several research challenges are listed for future work. In addition, Mist Computing is the last piece to benefit from the resources of complete network infrastructures in the Fluid Computing paradigm.