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Mobile computing: issues and challenges

Conference Paper · December 2015

DOI: 10.1109/HONET.2015.7395438

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 MOBILE COMPUTING: ISSUES AND CHALLENGES
Sajid Umair, Umair Muneer, Muhammad Nauman Zahoor, Asad W Malik
School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (SEECS)
National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) Islamabad Pakistan
{14mscssumair, 14mscsubutt, 14mscsmzahoor, asad.malik}@seecs.edu.pk

Abstract— Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) is an emerging field. still certain application that demands a big computational
Due to the wide usage of mobile devices and variety of applications, power and phones respond very slow [ 6 ] . To solve this
mobile cloud computing becomes a necessary part for mobile problem industry have to think about and change software or
devices, due to reliability and portability as data processing and hardware to fulfill it requirements [ 7 ] . Hardware resources
storage take place outside of the mobile. It is useful in a sense to
cannot be enhanced due to design issues but software can be
save battery and computation power of mobile devices which is a
serious issue in high power mobile devices. Mobile cloud computing done. Computation transformation is a technique where we can
provide mobile users a service where they can use cloud services on shift our computation task on the cloud. Transformation of the
their mobiles and perform computations. As mobile C l o u d computation on the cloud enhances the performance of the
computing is still in early stage of development, it is useful to build a application and solves the issue of battery consumption and
thorough understanding about existing models and future trends. allow us to run application that are unable to run on mobile
The purpose of this survey is to analyze and point out the major devices [8].
challenges and risk involved in the mobile cloud computing as well There are many publications that point out the
as present new trends in this field. significance of MCC. In [15] author presents two models and
presents a technique to efficiently access the resources. In [9]
Keywords— Mobile cloud computing; virtualization; personal
cloud and [10] authors presented the challenges in the field of
mobile cloud. This paper also presents the differences between
I. INTRODUCTION cloud and mobile cloud architecture and factors affecting the
Cloud computing (CC) becomes an important research MCC on the cloud. Next section present architecture; where
area over the past few years as it allowed software to be section III presents literature review, MCC models are
operated on internet enabled devices. Cloud computing presented in section IV, comparison of mobile cloud models
provide utility to the user such that they can access are presented in and provide pros and cons. At the end, paper
application around the world on demand. Cloud consists of is concluded with critical review and future areas and
datacenter that provide services and maintained by the improvements.
providers. An organization such as Amazon, Microsoft and
II. MOBILE CLOUD COMPUTING ARCHITECTURE AND
Google shifted their datacenter and services on the cloud OFFLOADING
around the world on different locations [1]. As usage of
mobile devices is increasing day by day with increase in The main aim of cloud computing is to provide cost effective
their computation power but a t t h e s a m e t i m e there are services to users. Using cloud services, small scale businesses
certain issues of mobile devices like battery Power can access resources and find more opportunities to grow.
management, memory requirements and limited computation They provide ease of use to mobile users and enhance their
power. A s in cloud computing resources are virtualized and computation power, save their battery life, provide
divided over servers and a data center, MCC is inherited these communication channel and efficiency in completing their
properties. According to research from juniper cloud tasks. There are certain threats that both the technologies
computing base mobile applications are expected to rise 88% are facing.
annually from 2009 to 2014 [15]. In MCC latency in network, communication service issues,
This paper presents the cloud computing, infrastructure in bandwidth latency and mobile devices battery power are major
cloud current research trends and issues related to MCC. concern that needs to be solved. Cloud provides a model that
T he MCC consists of cloud, mobile, computing device and provides services in the form of infrastructure as a service
wireless channels, a n d resource providers [2]. Aim of (IAAS), platform as a service (PAAS) and software as a
MCC is to provide users an ease so that they can get service (SAAS). Figure 1 shows the architecture of MCC. In
everything on their mobile d e v i c e s with reliability [3]. In this architecture, mobile devices can gain cloud services in two
i t s s i m p l e s t form, mobile clo ud computing is a ways 1). Access cloud services directly by their mobile
structure where storage and processing of computing network 2). Access cloud through access points as shown
takes place outside mobile device; whereas, resources can be below. Using Mobile network they are connected to base
explored on the mobile. There are many cloud computing stations [11] or using the satellite connection. Telecom
applications; some of them are discus in the paper [4]. networks are connected to the internet and provide
One of the most prominent uses of mobile cloud computing is connectivity to the users so that they can access cloud
in e-commerce. MCC has impact on medical domain as well; services using mobile.
one can easily take help from doctors siting thousands of miles Main architecture consists of mobile users, mobile operators,
away. Internet Service Providers (ISP) and cloud providers etc.
Cloud computing has impact on mobile banking and mobile Smartphones with Wi-Fi facility communicate with the
games etc. [5] With the advent of smartphones and their network providers with the help of base stations or satellite
support for large applications like video games, image channels. Request sent from mobile devices are fulfilled on
processing and e-banking etc. Their c o mp l e x i t y a n d central servers and network providers side. Processing take
d e ma n d o f computational resources is increased. There is place at upper level of the architecture, generally cloud.
Network provider works as a middleware annd provide services III. LITERATURE REVIEW
to mobile users from the cloud providers. According to surveys [15][12]] there is an 18.1% increase in
mobile and mobile cloud com mputing market over the years.
The MCC provides the storaage efficiency. This gives the
energy efficiency and there is a less resource demand on the
MCC. There are number of authorsa publishing their research
papers in MCC field. L. Zhon anda B. Wang in [13] present the
role of internet in MCC. Abddullah Gani and Han Qi [14]
explained the infrastructure andd architecture of the MCC. They
also present different challengees of the MCC. Several studies
are there in which authors poinnt out the importance of mobile
cloud computing. According too a survey [12] there is a huge
Figure 1: Mobile Cloud Computing Arcchitecture increase in the revenue which is generated from the mobile
cloud computing and which is continuously increases in every
There are several MCC applications that arre using the cloud year. According to the curreent “Visiongain” report, MCC
with the help of internet directly. A more coompact view of the market will produce $45 billion in profit up to the year 2016
architecture is given in figure 2. [15]. MCC is used in manyy fields like natural language
processing and image processsing and also the sensor data
applications, social networkinng, multimedia search and so
many others [15]. The differeent characteristics of MCC are
given below
1) Break through the limitations in the hardware field.
2) Easy access of the data
3) Good Balancing of Load
4) Efficient word or Task Proccessing
5) Remove the regional restriction

1) What actually mobile

m cloud computing is?
Mobile cloud computing is thhe infrastructure in which the
processing of data and the stoorage of data is combined with
each other. Actually mobile cloud, computing is the
combination of three fields whhich are MCC and the other is
cloud computing and the laast one is wireless network
computing. The below figure 4((a) explain the concept of MCC
Figure 2: Detail View of Architectture

Computation Offloading is another main feature of mobile

cloud. Decision m a k i n g i n C o m p u t a t i o n o f f l o a d i n g
o n t h e cloud is a systematic process as show wn in figure 3.

Figure 4(a): Combinee Architecture Model

ud Computing
Different Features of Mobile Clou
Mobile cloud computing proovide different facilities like
scalability, mobility, flexibilityy, virtualization, mobile cloud
service connectivity, multi-tenaancy, mobile utility billing etc.
The facilities are also shown in details in the given figure 4(b)

Figure 3: Offloading of Mobile Cloud Coomputing

At the start of the application, user permisssion is required. If

user permits it then network connection iss checked for the
connection to cloud. Upon successful connection cloud
Figure 4(b): Facilities or Features of Mobile Cloud
resources are checked if they are available.. In the next phase
computation shifting is examined whetheer it is good idea
to offload the computation based on useer objectives or not. 2) Why Mobile Cloud Coomputing is getting Hype?
According to Gartner Group world
w wide mobile application
If it is feasible the transformation is performed otherwise
store and downloads are reach to
t 17.7 billion downloads in the
done at local level.
year 2011 [25]. That is a 117 percent increase from downloads
in 2010. According to a survey, this increase will reach to the
185 billion at the end of 2014 [25].
Different Motivations of MCC are, increasing battery life,
processing power, Remove the limitations from the current
mobile devices. Maximize and increase the resource sharing.
The different deployed models are given below
Private mobile cloud: The service provider provides the
mobile cloud resources to the group of users with the help of
wireless internet.
Ad-hoc mobile cloud: The services provide to the mobile
users to form an ad-hoc mobile network. Figure 6: Second Generation: Mobile Cloud infrastructures
Mobile community cloud: This provides the resources to its
clients form many mobile social networking communities Third Generation – Services of Mobilecloud
through the wireless internet. According to the survey of the Virgin Media Business CEO,
Mark Heraghty , the growth in mobile data usage has led to
3) Mobile Cloud Computing Research increase (dramatic) shifts that how mobiles are used in
There are a lot of research fields and subjects in the enterprise [17]. Third generation consist of four layers which
MCC. Some are given below are discussed below. The first layer is Computing cloud layer.
Engineering for MCC: Deals with the development of the The second layer is Network layer. The third layer is Mobile
MCC and applications. cloud layer and the fourth layer is Mobile Layer.
Mobile Networking for MCC: This field describes
the energy efficient communication and intelligent connection
between the computer, devices and network.
Mobile Cloud Infrastructure: With the
development of energy and cost effective mobile cloud model.
4) Generations of Mobile Cloud Computing
First Generation
First generation is based on Personal mobile cloud. Some of the
advantages/features are that all the services are maintained and
deployed in datacenter of the MCC. Scalability is also a very
big advantage and feature of this system. Contents of mobile
and application data are synchronized so this feature is related
to synchronization. Mobility feature is also play a very Figure 7: Third Generation: Mobile Cloud Service infrastructures
important role in this system [16]. This figure explains the first
generation of the personal mobile cloud. The complete Issues and challenges of mobile cloud computing
architecture of first generation is shown in figure 5. The author in [18]presents different issues and challenges in
the field of MCC and the issues are related to the different
factors like end users, operations, management of data and
application services and also related to the security. In this
section we present different challenges and issues related
to MCC. The first one is mobile cloud infrastructure. The
second is privacy in MCC. The third is mobility. The fourth is
green computing. And the last is mobile SaaS engineering.
In mobile cloud computing, the providers collect the personal
information of the mobile users and this is equal to the
gold mining and we see the long term effects. Hence we
say that cloud is a silver line. At the time, the data stored in the
computer hard disk or in the USB drive/device but when the
Figure 5: Personal Cloud infrastructures (First Generation Model) computer is damage or the USB drive is lost so the data is
also lost. For the permanent storage of data we use hard
Second Generation drives but if the hard drive is damage then the data is also loss
Second generation is based on Cloud- Based Mobile Cloud but when we use cloud, these problems cannot occur and the
Infrastructures. In this system, all the services are maintained data is not lost. Here we present some problems of cloud
and deployed in the datacenter of the MCC. One of the computing. The problems are mention given below.
new and additional features of the second generation is that the 1) The Users do not know the physical location of their data
On-demand service. This feature tells us that the services, and cloud providers provide their data on demand.
contents and data are providing to the mobile cloud on the basis 2) If a problem occurs in the data, the cloud provider is
of demand. Second generation system also provides scalability. responsible for that and the user do not know about the
The complete architecture of second generation is shown in damage in the data and also the user don’t know about the
figure 6. recovery of the data.
3) Data migration is also one of the serious problems the cloud
when the user try to change the cloud provider. And the
problem is that if we change the provider then the data on application is send back to the smartphone [23]. In this model
previous cloud is completely clear or not so there is no division of application for processing is dynamic and depends
guarantee for that either. on cloud resources and processing power. The detailed view of
4) This is also a big issue when the cloud provider is damaged, the mobile cloud cloning is shown in figure 8.
so from where do we recover our data.
Due to these issues and problems in the cloud computing, the 2) Energy Enhancement Model
MCC also has these major problems which is called mobility These type of models mainly focus on minimize the energy
problem. And this means that the mobile cloud computing consumption of smartphones by using cloud resource
collect the personal information from the mobile users so this efficiently. Computation that takes time are performed using
information’s are safe or not. So we say that the mobile cloud cloud by reducing overhead of applications.
security and privacy problem is the major issue and a) (μ) Cloud: This model takes parts of application from
problem in the mobile cloud computing. different sources to support reliability, portability and makes it
The next major challenge faced by MCC community is the configurable. At one time, single component is loaded on the
physical threats when the mobile device is lost or stolen. It is mobile phone and execute on the cloud sometime called hybrid
actually a physical threat to mobile device. If the user uses implementation. Components are represented as graph and
password or pin base security, this makes it possible that there edges represent their order of execution as well as
is no body that can access the mobile device without dependency. Whenever a component completes execution, its
permission.
output become input of the subsequent component. This
One other major challenge in mobile cloud computing is when
the Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) cards is removed from process continues until components are at the end.
the mobile and is accessed by everyone.
Now days there are a lot of research papers publish on the 3) Hybrid Application Models
mobile cloud architectures and infrastructures. Some of papers Hybrid models are designed to achieve multiple objectives
are of related to the developed the thin-client architecture for such as performance and energy efficiency. These types of
mobile. The research papers related to the thin clients are models are more suitable because multiple objectives are
Think Air [19] and [20] and also Hyrax [21]. One is the other achieved using one model.
important area in the MCC infrastructures related to the a) Think Air: This model support method level transformation
computation offloading which is very important and describe in
the research paper [22]. in the smartphone into cloud. It provides quality of service by
running parallel threads of clones on the smartphone. A
IV. TRENDS IN MOBILE CLOUD COMPUTING programmer has to define resource intensive methods so that
There are different models that are designed to achieve some they can offload to the cloud for execution.
objective like executing large computation on cloud as local
system has insufficient resources, models to achieve efficiency
in energy and resources. So adopting specific model depends
on objectives of the user. There are certain models that fulfill
certain prospective of users and they are more useful as they
considered more applications. There are four models which
are as follows.

1) Performance Enhancement Model

Main objective of this model is to improve performance by
using the cloud resources. Applications are offloaded on high
performance cloud where computation takes less time. Here are
some useful models.
Figure 9: Think Air Model
a) Cloud cloning: Cloud cloning is a mechanism in which part
of the application is offloaded on the cloud. It basically works a) Cuckoo: This is more versatile model and provides an ease
on synchronization scheme.
of use for programming community. This is made for android
platform. To develop application in cuckoo, developer must
create a project and write the code. In the next step is to use
existing model of android, compute intensive parts are
separated and run on the cloud.

V. COMPARISON OF DIFFERENT MOBILE CLOUD

MODELS
Every model contains pros and cons but one thing common in
all is that they have not considered the privacy of application in
the cloud. Below, in table-1, model comparisons are shown.
Figure 8: Cloud Cloning Model Below table mention some requirements which are necessary to
Consistency is maintained by pointing the current clone to the handle.
unprocessed parts of application. When execution is completed,
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