Dynamic Application Partitioning and Task-Scheduling Secure Schemes for Biosensor Healthcare Workload in Mobile Edge Cloud

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors in this paper propose DAPWTS, a scheme for secure application partitioning and task scheduling in mobile edge cloud targetted at biosensors applications. The scheme uses a min-cut algorithm, energy-enabled scheduling, failure scheduling, and security schemes with the goal to securely minimize the nodes' energy consumption and divide the application between local nodes and edge nodes. The authors use simulations and claim that their DAPWTS outperforms other compared systems in terms of energy consumption, deadline, and application failures.   This is a useful paper and can be accepted subject to some modifications.    The write-up of the paper overall is fine but it would benefit from some refinements throughout the paper. For example, the introduction is cumbersome and is not remarkable. A better write-up would help readers' motivation and understanding of the rest of the article.   The information about the simulation setups is limited. Further information is required.    The results points are too sparse (the results data has relatively few points in the graphs). More data points will help in an in-depth understanding of the scheme behaviour.    The results graphs' quality is poor and should be imporved.     

Author Response

The authors in this paper propose DAPWTS, a scheme for secure application partitioning and task scheduling in mobile edge cloud targetted at biosensors applications. The scheme uses a min-cut algorithm, energy-enabled scheduling, failure scheduling, and security schemes with the goal to securely minimize the nodes' energy consumption and divide the application between local nodes and edge nodes. The authors use simulations and claim that their DAPWTS outperforms other compared systems in terms of energy consumption, deadline, and application failures.   

Q1# This is a useful paper and can be accepted subject to some modifications.    The write-up of the paper overall is fine but it would benefit from some refinements throughout the paper. For example, the introduction is cumbersome and is not remarkable. A better write-up would help readers' motivation and understanding of the rest of the article.

 Author Response:

 Thank you so much, dear reviewer, for the valuable comment, the current version of the manuscript revised the entire introduction part as well as manuscript writing parts with improved English and minimized all typo errors from the entire manuscript. Initially, the introduction part has been improved with both scientific and error-free content. Then the entire manuscript was revised by all authors very carefully and removed all typos and grammatical errors in the manuscript.  

 Q2#  The information about the simulation setups is limited. Further information is required.    The results points are too sparse (the results data has relatively few points in the graphs). More data points will help in an in-depth understanding of the scheme behavior.    The results graphs' quality is poor and should be improved.     

 Author Response:

Thank you so much, dear reviewer, for the valuable comment, the authors added the simulation part with the explanation of all simulation parameters and discussed all configuration parameters along with simulation environment in the manuscript and highlighted in Section 5 on page number 16. After that, from Figure 6 to 13, the current version of the manuscript improved the visibility of all result graphs in the current version of the manuscript as shown in Section 5 and highlighted in the manuscript.

 

Dear editor, the manuscript has been improved based on the comment of reviwer1 and fulfills all questions with the improved answered in the current version of the manuscript.

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript introduces an application partitioning method called DAPWTS. The method is novel in terms of research approaches and is well presented. The basic idea of the manuscript is based on simulation with realistic scenarios.

Although it is well-organized and easy to read, there are issues for revisions.

• The paper roadmap (last part of Introduction) is wrongly written.
• More gentle introduction of secure min-cut algorithm is required. I suggest including an working example for Figure 2.
• Scientific representation is required. I recommend consulting a manuscript editing service.
• The complexity of the proposed method is somewhat high (although it is better than some studies). The authors should explain this drawback and disadvantage.
• The figures' labeling (Y axis) is wrongly written.
• The authors combined the related studies into only two categories for comparative analysis, although there are specific differences in the categories.
• In Conclusion, please add numerical result summaries.
• There are many erratas and typos in the manuscript. Proofread is required.
• There are duplicated or similar sentences exist throughout the manuscript.
• Some citations seem artifact (e.g.,  [21–27]) without explanation.
• Figure 12's sub-figures are confusing. I conjecture that two sub-figures can be combined.

Author Response

The manuscript introduces an application partitioning method called DAPWTS. The method is novel in terms of research approaches and is well presented. The basic idea of the manuscript is based on simulation with realistic scenarios.

Although it is well-organized and easy to read, there are issues with revisions.

• The paper roadmap (last part of Introduction) is wrongly written.

Author Response:

Thank you so much, dear reviewer, for the valuable comment; the Introduction's last part in both ways, scientifically and grammatically, improved in the current version of the manuscript and highlighted in the manuscript on page number 3.

• More gentle Introduction of secure min-cut algorithm is required. I suggest including an working example for Figure 2.

 

Author Response:

Thank you so much, dear reviewer, for the valuable comment; the current version of the manuscript the study improved the comments and defined the detail of the secure min-cut algorithm and highlighted on page number 13 in the current version of the manuscript. The secure min-cut algorithm is a weighted graph of mobile workflow applications that divides the graph into local and remote executions to minimize the makespan and energy of edges. Before delivering their data to the system's cloud nodes, the tasks are encrypted and decrypted locally. The secure min-cut algorithm's primary purpose is to divide mobile workflow applications between local and remote cloud execution depending on energy and time restrictions.

 

 

• Scientific representation is required. I recommend consulting a manuscript editing service.

Author Response:

Thank you so much, dear reviewer, for the valuable comment; the current version of the manuscript was revised by all authors and improved the scientific notations, algorithms, and simulation results. We tried to our best level and improved the manuscript according to the given reviewer comments in the current version of the manuscript.

 

• The complexity of the proposed method is somewhat high (although it is better than some studies). The authors should explain this drawback and disadvantage.

Author Response:

Thank you so much, dear reviewer, for the valuable comment; the current version of the manuscript the time complexity of the study for the application partitioning scheme for the mobile workflow healthcare applications and highlighted in the manuscript on page number 13. The study compared the DAPWTS application partitioning scheme with the existing schemes of application partitioning for healthcare applications. In the time complexity, the study defined the why time complexity is n5 and how it still works better than existing schemes totally defined in the manuscript on page number 13.

 

• The figures' labeling (Y-axis) is wrongly written.

Author Response:

Thank you so much, dear reviewer, for the valuable comment; the current version of the manuscript has been improved. We simulated all the results in 100% percent of energy and time. The Y-axis represented the energy-consumption level, i.e., 20 to 100%. In the current version of the manuscript, the study improved Y-axis and was defined in the manuscript on page number 19 and highlighted in the manuscript.

 

• The authors combined the related studies into only two categories for comparative analysis, although there are specific differences in the categories.

Author Response:

Thank you so much, dear reviewer, for the valuable comment; the current version of the manuscript has the existing works into application partitioning schemes, offloading and resource allocation schemes, and security for the healthcare applications and highlighted in the related work section 2. The study analyzed and suggested new work at the end of related work how the current work is more optimal than the current studies.

• In Conclusion, please add numerical result summaries.

Author Response:

Thank you so much, dear reviewer, for the valuable comment; the current version of the manuscript showed the tangible and numeric optimized results of the DAPWTS schemes in the study. The study analyzed that how they improved the optimal and tangible results as compared to existing studies. All the changes were done in the conclusion part inside the manuscript and highlighted on page number 24.

 

• There are many erratas and typos in the manuscript. Proofread is required.

Author Response:

Thank you so much, dear reviewer, for the valuable comment; the current version of the manuscript was revised many times by all authors and removed the typo errors from the abstract part to the conclusion part. The authors also exploited the different frameworks such as Grammarly and online grammar checker. Hopefully, this version has limited issues in the content.

 

• There are duplicated or similar sentences that exist throughout the manuscript.

Author Response:

Thank you so much, dear reviewer, for the valuable comment; it is true, there were many duplications in the contents from the Introduction; this current removed all possible repetition and duplications from the manuscript and improved the write-up and understanding level for the reader.

 

• Some citations seem artifact (e.g., [21–27]) without explanation.

Author Response:

Thank you so much, dear reviewer, for the valuable comment; in the current version of the manuscript, the study added the purpose of these studies [21-27] and their objectives and highlighted in the manuscript on page number 3.

 

• Figure 12's sub-figures are confusing. I conjecture that two sub-figures can be combined.

Author Response:

Thank you so much, dear reviewer, for the valuable comment; Figure 12 showed the failure tasks and their recovery in the application partitioning and scheduling problem for the healthcare applications. The applications are G1, and G2 faced many failures of tasks due to resource availability and other issues. The study improved Figure 12 and divided it into Figure 12 (a) and (b) parts and showed the performance or failure of tasks in the system. The changes are highlighted on page number 13 in Figure 12.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have addressed my concerns.

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors thoroughly revised the manuscript based the previous review.

Thus, I recommend the manuscript for publication.