Energy-Efficient Task Scheduling and Resource Allocation for Improving the Performance of a Cloud–Fog Environment

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

1. In page 6, the authors stated that 'As a consequence, the workloads that surpass ?_j_p via the node are discarded.' But, I think this sentence may not be necessary since the authors already mentioned that the corresponding workload has been forwarded to cloud.

2. In equation 2, the values are the same for different two conditions and there may be error in 'j' or 'J'.

3. The author should address how to decide (or assume) the cost (i.e., 27300$).

Author Response

Dear sir,

         I have corrected and uploaded the corrections given by you sir.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The article is devoted to the interesting and topical matter of task/service scheduling and resource allocation.

The article is structured correctly and the content is presented in a logically consistent order. However, there is a lack of the "Discussion and limitations" section. 

The authors write about task scheduling and resource allocation but do not underline software architecture. Generally, software functions are delivered by services. The authors mentioned that fact writing about cloud services (line 242). The architecture may slightly differ but at the bottom, there are services. In my view, the subject is considered in the literature in the broader context of business process execution optimization. There are various methods that can be grouped into three stages of business process optimization: Resource Allocation, Service Composition, and Service Scheduling. I recommend using the paper: "Optimization of Business Process Execution in Services Architecture: A Systematic Literature Review" (https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3102668). It is worth underlining that Resource Allocation is the topic of actual research and the Service Scheduling stage has potential for further exploration so the authors fill the gap. 

In the section "Related work" the authors should include and comment on the recently published article in Symmetry "An Intelligent Genetic Scheme for Multi-Objective Collaboration Services Scheduling" (https://doi.org/10.3390/sym14102037).

The "Discussion and limitations" section should be added. The authors should discuss the pros and cons of their approach. That is the place for discussion on obtained results. I am also asking the authors to comment on the schedule length. Is the level of several minutes satisfactory for business use? Please also comment on the economic cost.

The "Conclusions" section should be more supported by the results. It is also worth enhancing the planned further works. In lines 597-600,  the authors write "compared to the ECBTSA and CBTSA" but omit data for those algorithms. Authors should devote more attention to this section.

The English used in the manuscript requires additional effort to correct as far as punctuation and style are concerned. Please also avoid using phrases like "etc." (line 241) and correct figures for spelling mistakes (Figure 2, is "workloads" but should be "workloads"). I am asking the authors to correct the Abstract section using clear and short sentences.

The paper is promising but requires refinement and clarifying pointed topics.

Author Response

Dear sir,

 I have corrected and uploaded the correction given by you sir.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The article is devoted to the interesting and topical matter of task/service scheduling and resource allocation in Cloud-Fog applications.

The article is structured correctly and the content is presented in a logically consistent order.

I confirm that the authors have addressed all of my concerns. They completely rebuilt the "Abstract" section and significantly improved the "Introduction", "Related work", and "Conclusion" ones. Besides, the authors have augmented the manuscript with the "Discussion and limitations" section. Important changes have been incorporated in the "Methodology" section. Thus the contribution has been additionally broadened.

However, in the "References" section the authors should double-check that all references have a DOI. Minor stylistic or punctuation errors should be corrected but they do not diminish the value of the manuscript. Besides, both can be done at the author's proofreading stage.

The manuscript has been improved precisely and the authors have clearly marked all changes.

I recommend accepting the paper in its present form.