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A FRAMEWORK FOR MOBILE CLOUD COMPUTING

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International Journal of Computer Networking,
Wireless and Mobile Communications (IJCNWMC)
ISSN 2250-1568
Vol. 3, Issue 1, Mar 2013, 1-12
© TJPRC Pvt. Ltd.

A FRAMEWORK FOR MOBILE CLOUD COMPUTING

R. LAKSHMAN NAIK & S. S. V. N. SARMA

Department of CSE, Vaagdevi College of Engineering,Warangal, Andhra Pradesh, India
ABSTRACT

Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) which combines mobile computing and cloud computing, has become one of
the industry buzz words and a major discussion thread in the IT world since 2009. As MCC is still at the early stage of
development, it is necessary to grasp a thorough understanding of the technology in order to point out the direction of
future research. MCC has been introduced to be a potential technology for mobile services. MCC integrates the cloud
computing into the mobile environment and overcomes obstacles related to the performance; environment and security
were discussed in mobile computing. This paper presents a brief account on the background of MCC: from mobile
computing to cloud computing and then followed with a discussion on recent research work. The rest of the paper analyses
the challenges of mobile cloud computing. Finally points out promising future research scope and summary of this study.

KEYWORDS: Cloud, Mobile, Mobile Cloud, PaaS, SaaS, IaaS

INTRODUCTION

Over the past few years, advances in the field of network based computing and applications on demand have led
to an explosive growth of application models such as cloud computing, software as a service, community network, web
store, and so on. As a major application model in the era of the Internet, Cloud Computing has become a significant
research topic of the scientific and industrial communities since 2007. Commonly, cloud computing is described as a range
of services which are provided by an Internet-based cluster system.

Such cluster systems consist of a group of low-cost servers or Personal Computers (PCs), organizing the various
resources of the computers according to a certain management strategy, and offering safe, reliable, fast, convenient and
transparent services such as data storage, accessing and computing to clients. According to the top ten strategic technology
trends for 2012 [1] provided by Gartner (a famous global analytical and consulting company), cloud computing has been
on the top of the list, which means cloud computing will have an increased impact on the enterprise and most organizations
in 2012.

Cloud computing (CC) has been widely recognized as the next generation’s computing infrastructure. CC offers
some advantages by allowing users to use infrastructure (e.g., servers, networks, and storages), platforms (e.g., middleware
services and operating systems), and softwares (e.g., application programs) provided by cloud providers (e.g., Google,
Amazon, and Salesforce) at low cost. In addition, CC enables users to elastically utilize resources in an on-demand fashion.

Meanwhile, Mobile devices (e.g., smartphone, tablet pcs, etc) are increasingly becoming an essential part of
human life as the most effective and convenient communication tools not bounded by time and place. Mobile users
accumulate rich experience of various services from mobile applications (e.g., iPhone apps, Google apps, etc), which run
on the devices and/or on remote servers via wireless networks. The rapid progress of mobile computing (MC) [2] becomes
a powerful trend in the development of IT technology as well as commerce and industry fields. However, the mobile
devices are facing many challenges in their resources (e.g., battery life, storage, and bandwidth) and communications (e.g.,
mobility and security) [3]. The limited resources significantly impede the improvement of service qualities.
2 R. Lakshman Naik & S. S. V. N. Sarma

Smart phones are considered as the representative for the various mobile devices as they have been connected to
the Internet with the rapidly growing of wireless network technology. Ubiquity and mobility are two major features in the
next generation network which provides a range of personalized network services through numerous network terminals and
modes of accessing. The core technology of cloud computing is centralizing computing, services, and specific applications
as a utility to be sold like water, gas or electricity to users. Thus, the combination of a ubiquities mobile network and cloud
computing generates a new computing mode, namely Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC). As a result, mobile applications
can be rapidly provisioned and released with the minimal management efforts or service provider’s interactions. With the
explosion of mobile applications and the support of CC for a variety of services for mobile users, MCC is introduced as an
integration of cloud computing into the mobile environment. Mobile cloud computing brings new types of services and
facilities for mobile users to take full advantages of cloud computing.

BASIC CONCEPT OF MC, CC & MCC

As a development and extension of Cloud Computing and Mobile Computing, Mobile Cloud Computing, as a
new phrase, has been devised since 2009. In order to help us grasping better understanding of Mobile Cloud Computing,
let’s start from the two previous techniques: Mobile Computing and Cloud Computing.

Mobile Computing

Mobility has become a very popular word and rapidly increasing part in today’s computing area. An incredible
growth has appeared in the development of mobile devices such as, smartphone, PDA, GPS Navigation and laptops with a
variety of mobile computing, networking and security technologies. In addition, with the development of wireless
technology like WiMax, Ad Hoc Network and WIFI, users may be surfing the Internet much easier but not limited by the
cables as before. Thus, those mobile devices have been accepted by more and more people as their first choice of working
and entertainment in their daily lives.

So, what is Mobile computing exactly? In Wikipedia, it is described as a form of human-computer interaction by
which a computer is expected to be transported during normal usage. Mobile computing is based on a collection of three
major concepts: hardware, software and communication. The concepts of hardware can be considered as mobile devices,
such as smartphone and laptop, or their mobile components. Software of mobile computing is the numerous mobile
applications in the devices, such as the mobile browser, anti-virus software and games. The communication issue includes
the infrastructure of mobile networks, protocols and data delivery in their use. They must be transparent to end users. Thus
the framework of mobile computing is as shown in below Fig. 1.

Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing has become a popular phrase since 2007. However, there is no consensual definition on what a
Cloud Computing or Cloud Computing System is, due to dozens of developers and organizations described it from
different perspectives. C. Hewitt [4] introduces that the major function of a cloud computing system is storing data on the
cloud servers, and uses of cache memory technology in the client to fetch the data. Those clients can be PCs, laptops,
smartphones and so on. R. Buyya [5] gives a definition from the perspective of marking that cloud computing is a parallel
and distributed computing system, which is combined by a group of virtual machines with internal links. Such systems
dynamically offer computing resources from service providers to customers according to their Service level Agreement
(SLA). However, some authors mentioned that cloud computing was not a completely new concept. L. Youseff [6] from
UCSB argue that cloud computing is just combined by many existent and few new concepts in many research fields, such
as distributed and grid computing, Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) and in virtualization.
A Framework for Mobile Cloud Computing 3

Figure 1: The Framework of Mobile Computing Figure 2: The Framework of Cloud Computing

In this paper, we consider the cloud computing is a large scale economic and business computing paradigm with
virtualization as its core technology. The cloud computing system is the development of parallel processing, distributed
and grid computing on the Internet, which provides various QoS guaranteed services such as hardware, infrastructure,
platform, software and storage to different Internet applications and users.

Cloud computing systems actually can be considered as a collection of different services, thus the framework of
cloud computing is divided into four layers, which are data centers layer, infrastructure layer, platform layer, and
application layer is as shown in Fig. 2.

Data Centers Layer

This layer provides the hardware facility and infrastructure for clouds. In data center layer, a number of servers
are linked with high-speed networks to provide services for customers. Typically, data centers are built in less populated
places, with high power supply stability and a low risk of disaster.

Infrastructure Layer

It includes resources of computing and storage. In this layer, physical devices and hardware, such as servers and
storages are virtualized as a resource pool to provide computing storage and network services to users, in order to install
operation system (OS) and operate software application. Thus it is denoted as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). IaaS
enables the provision of storage, hardware, servers and networking components. The client typically pays on a per-use
basis. Thus, clients can save cost as the payment is only based on how much resource they really use. Infrastructure can be
expanded or shrunk dynamically as needed. Services of this layer such as Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2) of Amazon and
S3 (Simple Storage Service).

Platform Layer

This layer is considered as a core layer in the cloud computing system, which includes the environment of parallel
programming design, distributed storage and management system for structured mass data, distributed file system for mass
data, and other system management tools for cloud computing. Program developers are the major clients of the platform
layer. All platform resources such as program testing, running and maintaining are provided by the platform directly but
not to end users. Thus, this type of services in a platform layer is called Platform as a Service (PaaS). PaaS offers an
advanced integrated environment for building, testing and deploying custom applications. The typical services are Google
App Engine, Azure from Microsoft and Amazon Map Reduce/Simple Storage Service.
4 R. Lakshman Naik & S. S. V. N. Sarma

Application Layer

This layer provides some simple software and applications, as well as costumer interfaces to end users. Thus we
name this type of services in the application layer as Software as a Service (SaaS). SaaS supports a software distribution
with specific requirements. In this layer, the users can access an application and information remotely via the Internet and
pay only for that they use. Users use client software or a browser to call services from providers through the Internet, and
pay costs according to the utility business model (like water or electricity). The earliest SaaS is the Customer Relationship
Management (CRM) from Salesforce, which was developed based on the force.com (a PaaS in Salesforce). Some other
services provided by Google on-line office such as documents, spreadsheets, presentations are all SaaS.

Although the cloud computing architecture can be divided into four layers as shown in Fig. 2, it does not mean
that the top layer must be built on the layer directly below it. For example, the SaaS application can be deployed directly
on IaaS, instead of PaaS. Also, some services can be considered as a part of more than one layer. For example, data storage
service can be viewed as either in IaaS or PaaS. Given this architectural model, the users can use the services flexibly and
efficiently.

Mobile Cloud Computing

Nowadays, both hardware and software of mobile devices get greater improvement than before, some
smartphones such as iPhone 4S, Android serials, Windows Mobile serials and Blackberry, are no longer just traditional
mobile phones with conversation, SMS, Email and website browser, but are daily necessities to users. Meanwhile, those
smartphones include various sensing modules like navigation, optics, gravity, orientation, and so on. This brings a
convenient and intelligent mobile experience to users.

In 2010, Google CEO Eric Schmidt described mobile cloud computing in an interview that ’based on cloud
computing service development, mobile phones will become increasingly complicated, and evolve to a portable super
computer’ [15]. In the face of various mobile cloud services provided by Microsoft, Apple, Google, HTC, and so on, users
may be confused about what mobile cloud computing exactly is, and what its features are.

The Mobile Cloud Computing Forum defines MCC as follows: “Mobile Cloud Computing at its simplest refers to
an infrastructure where both the data storage and the data processing happen outside of the mobile device. Mobile cloud
applications move the computing power and data storage away from mobile phones and into the cloud, bringing
applications and mobile computing to not just smartphone users but a much broader range of mobile subscribers”.

Aepona [7] describes MCC as a new paradigm for mobile applications whereby the data processing and storage
are moved from the mobile device to powerful and centralized computing platforms located in clouds. These centralized
applications are then accessed over the wireless connection based on a thin native client or web browser on the mobile
devices.

Similar with Cloud Computing, there are a lot but no consensual definitions on what mobile cloud computing is.
In this paper, we consider it is a novel computing mode consisting of mobile computing and cloud computing, which
provide cloud based services to users through the Internet and mobile devices. On one hand, the mobile cloud computing is
a development of mobile computing, and an extension to cloud computing. In mobile cloud computing, the previous
mobile device-based intensive computing, data storage and mass information processing have been transferred to ’cloud’
and thus the requirements of mobile devices in computing capability and resources have been reduced, so the developing,
running, deploying and using mode of mobile applications have been totally changed.
A Framework for Mobile Cloud Computing 5

On the other hand, the terminals which people used to access and acquire cloud services are suitable for mobile
devices like smartphone, PDA, Tablet, and iPad but not restricted to fixed devices (such as PC), which reflects the
advantages and original intention of cloud computing. Therefore, from both aspects of mobile computing and cloud
computing, the mobile cloud computing is a combination of the two technologies, a development of distributed, grid and
centralized algorithms, and have broad prospects for application.

As shown is the Fig. 3, mobile cloud computing can be simply divided into cloud computing and mobile
computing. Those mobile devices can be laptops, PDA, smartphones, and so on. This connects with a hotspot or base
station by 3G, WIFI, or GPRS. As the computing and major data processing phases have been migrated to ‘cloud’, the
capability requirement of mobile devices is limited, some low-cost mobile devices or even non-smartphones can also
achieve mobile cloud computing by using a cross-platform mid-ware.

Although the client in mobile cloud computing is changed from PCs or fixed machines to mobile devices, the
main concept is still cloud computing. Mobile users send service requests to the cloud through a web browser or desktop
application, and then the management component of cloud allocates resources to the request to establish connection, while
the monitoring and calculating functions of mobile cloud computing will be implemented to ensure the QoS until the
connection is completed.

Figure 3: The Framework of Mobile Cloud Computing

CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS

The main objective of mobile cloud computing is to provide a convenient and rapid method for users to access
and receive data from the cloud, such convenient and rapid method means accessing cloud computing resources effectively
by using mobile devices. The major challenge of mobile cloud computing comes from the characters of mobile devices and
wireless networks, as well as their own restriction and limitation, and such challenge makes application designing,
programming and deploying on mobile and distributed devices more complicated than on the fixed cloud devices [16]. In
mobile cloud computing environment, the limitations of mobile devices, quality of wireless communication, types of
application, and support from cloud computing to mobile are all important factors that affect assessing from cloud
computing. Table 1 gives an overview of proposed challenges and some solutions about mobile cloud computing.

Table 1: Challenges and Solutions of Mobile Cloud Computing

Challenges Solutions
Limitations of mobile devices Virtualization and Image, Task migration
Quality of communication Bandwidth upgrading, Data delivery time reducing
Division of applications services Elastic application division mechanism
6 R. Lakshman Naik & S. S. V. N. Sarma

Limitations of Mobile Devices

While discussing mobile devices in cloud the first thing is resource-constrain. Though smartphones have been
improved obviously in various aspects such as capability of CPU and memory, storage, size of screen, wireless
communication, sensing technology, and operation systems, still have serious limitations such as limited computing
capability and energy resource, to deploy complicated applications. By contrast with PCs and Laptops in a given condition,
these smartphones like iPhone 4S, Android serials, Windows Mobile serials decrease 3 times in processing capacity, 8
times in memory, 5 to 10 times in storage capacity and 10 times in network bandwidth.

Normally, smartphone needs to be charged everyday as dialing calls, sending messages, surfing the Internet,
community accessing, and other internet applications. According to past development trends, the increased mobile
computing ability and rapid development of screen technology will lead to more and more complicated applications
deployed in smartphones. If the battery technology cannot be improved in a short time, then how to effectively save battery
power in smartphone is a major issue we meet today. The processing capacity, storage, battery time, and communication of
those smartphones will be improved consistently with the development of mobile computing. However, such enormous
variations will persist as one of major challenges in mobile cloud computing.

Quality of Communication

In contrast with wired network uses physical connection to ensure bandwidth consistency, the data transfer rate in
mobile cloud computing environment is constantly changing and the connection is discontinuous due to the existing
clearance in network overlay. Furthermore, data centre in large enterprise and resource in Internet service provider
normally is far away to end users, especially to mobile device users. In wireless network, the network latency delay may
200 ms in ’last mile’ but only 50 ms in traditional wired network. Some other issues such as dynamic changing of
application throughput, mobility of users, and even weather will lead to changes in bandwidth and network overlay.
Therefore, the handover delay in mobile network is higher than in wired network.

Division of Application Services

In mobile cloud computing environment, due to the issue of limited resources, some applications of compute-
intensive and data-intensive cannot be deployed in mobile devices, or they may consume massive energy resources.
Therefore, we have to divide the applications and use the capacity of cloud computing to achieve those purposes, which is:
the core computing task is processed by cloud, and those mobile devices are responsible for some simple tasks only. In this
processing, the major issues affecting performance of mobile cloud computing are: data processing in data centre and
mobile device, network handover delay, and data delivery time.

For a given standard, providing a quality guaranteed cloud service should consider the following facts: optimal
division of application between cloud and mobile device, interaction between low-latency and code offload, high-
bandwidth between cloud and mobile device for high speed data transmission, user-oriented cloud application
performance, self-adaptation mechanism of mobile cloud computing, and optimal consumption and overhead of mobile
devices and cloud servers. The following strategies can be used to response to the challenges:

• Upgrade bandwidth for wireless connection, make the web content more suitable for mobile network using
regional data centers.

• Deploy the application processing node at the ’edge’ of cloud in order to reduce data delivery time.

• Duplicate mobile devices to cloud using virtualization and image technologies, to process Data-Intensive
A Framework for Mobile Cloud Computing 7

Computing (DIC) and Energy-Intensive Computing, such as virus scanning in mobile devices.

• Dynamically optimize application push in cloud and the division with mobile terminals.

ADVANTAGES OF MOBILE CLOUD COMPUTING

Cloud computing is known to be a promising solution for mobile computing due to many reasons (e.g., mobility,
communication, and portability). In the following, we describe how the cloud can be used to overcome obstacles in mobile
computing, thereby pointing out advantages of MCC.

Extending Battery Lifetime

Battery is one of the main concerns for mobile devices. Several solutions have been proposed to enhance the CPU
performance [8] and to manage the disk and screen in an intelligent manner [9] to reduce power consumption. However,
these solutions require changes in the structure of mobile devices, or they require a new hardware that results in an increase
of cost and may not be feasible for all mobile devices. Computation offloading technique is proposed with the objective to
migrate the large computations and complex processing from resource-limited devices (i.e., mobile devices) to resourceful
machines (i.e., servers in clouds). This avoids taking a long application execution time on mobile devices which results in
large amount of power consumption.

[10, 11] evaluate the effectiveness of offloading techniques through several experiments. The results demonstrate
that the remote application execution can save energy significantly. Especially, [18] evaluates large-scale numerical
computations and shows that up to 45% of energy consumption can be reduced for large matrix calculation. In addition,
many mobile applications take advantages from task migration and remote processing. For example, offloading a compiler
optimization for image processing [12] can reduce 41% for energy consumption of a mobile device. Also, using memory
arithmetic unit and interface (MAUI) to migrate mobile game components [13] to servers in the cloud can save 27% of
energy consumption for computer games and 45% for the chess game.

Improving Data Storage Capacity and Processing Power

Storage capacity is also a constraint for mobile devices. MCC is developed to enable mobile users to store/access
the large data on the cloud through wireless networks. First example is the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)
which supports file storage service. Another example is Image

Exchange which utilizes the large storage space in clouds for mobile users. This mobile photo sharing service
enables mobile users to upload images to the clouds immediately after capturing. Users may access all images from any
devices. With cloud, the users can save considerable amount of energy and storage space on their mobile devices since all
images are sent and processed on the clouds. Facebook is the most successful social network application today, and it is
also a typical example of using cloud in sharing images.

MCC also helps reducing the running cost for compute-intensive applications that take long time and large
amount of energy when performed on the limited-resource devices. Cloud computing can efficiently support various tasks
for data warehousing, managing and synchronizing multiple documents online.

For example, clouds can be used for transcoding [14], playing chess [13, 15], or broadcasting multimedia services
[16] to mobile devices. In these cases, all the complex calculations for transcoding or offering an optimal chess move that
take a long time when perform on mobile devices will be processed quickly on the cloud. Mobile applications also are not
constrained by storage capacity on the devices because their data now is stored on the cloud.
8 R. Lakshman Naik & S. S. V. N. Sarma

Improving Reliability

Storing data or running applications on clouds is an effective way to improve the reliability since the data and
application are stored and backed up on a number of computers. This reduces the chance of data and application lost on the
mobile devices. In addition, MCC can be designed as a comprehensive data security model for both service providers and
users. For example, the cloud can be used to protect copyrighted digital contents (e.g., video, clip, and music) from being
abused and unauthorized distribution [17]. Also, the cloud can remotely provide to mobile users with security services such
as virus scanning, malicious code detection, and authentication [18]. Also, such cloud-based security services can make
efficient use of the collected record from different users to improve the effectiveness of the services.

In addition, MCC also inherits some advantages of clouds for mobile services as follows:

Dynamic Provisioning

Dynamic on-demand provisioning of resources on a fine-grained, self-service basis is a flexible way for service
providers and mobile users to run their applications without advanced reservation of resources.

Scalability: The deployment of mobile applications can be performed and scaled to meet the unpredictable user
demands due to flexible resource provisioning. Service providers can easily add and expand an application and service
without or with little constraint on the resource usage.

Multi-tenancy: Service providers (e.g., network operator and data center owner) can share the resources and
costs to support a variety of applications and large number of users.

Ease of Integration: Multiple services from different service providers can be integrated easily through the cloud
and the Internet to meet the users’ demands.

FUTURE RESEARCH SCOPE OF THE WORK

Although some projects of mobile cloud computing has already been deployed around the world, there is still a
long way for business implementation, and some research aspects should be considered in further work. However, there are
still some issues which need to be addressed. This section presents several open issues and possible research directions in
the development of MCC.

Low Bandwidth

Bandwidth is one of the big issues in MCC since the radio resource for wireless networks is much scarce as
compared with the traditional wired networks. Although many researchers propose the optimal and efficient way of
bandwidth allocation, the bandwidth limitation is still a big concern because the number of mobile and cloud users is
dramatically increasing.

Data Delivery

Due to the feature of resource-constrains, mobile devices have potential challenges in cloud accessing, consistent
accessing, data transmission, and so on. Such challenges can be solved using: special application (service) and middle-ware
(provide a platform for all mobile cloud computing systems).

Network Access Management

An efficient network access management not only improves link performance for mobile users but also optimizes
bandwidth usage. Cognitive radio can be expected as a solution to achieve the wireless access management in mobile
A Framework for Mobile Cloud Computing 9

communication environment [19]. Cognitive radio increases the efficiency of the spectrum utilization significantly, by
allowing unlicensed users to access the spectrum allocated to the licensed users.

When this technique is integrated into MCC, the spectrum can be utilized more efficiently, the spectrum scarcity
can be solved and thus millions of dollars for network providers can be saved [20]. However, cognitive radio is defined as
wireless communication technology in which each node communicates via an optimal wireless system based on
recognition of radio resource availability in heterogeneous wireless communication environment. Therefore, mobile users
in MCC must be able to detect this radio resource availability (through spectrum sensing) while ensuring that the
traditional services will not be interfered.

Task Division

Researchers divide tasks (applications) from mobile devices into multiple sub-tasks and deliver some of them to
run in cloud, which is a good solution to the resource limited mobile devices. However, we do not have an optimal strategy
or algorithm on how to divide these tasks, which one should be processed by cloud and which one by devices.

Quality of Service

In MCC, mobile users need to access to servers located in a cloud when requesting services and resources in the
cloud. However, the mobile users may face some problems such as congestion due to the limitation of wireless bandwidths,
network disconnection, and the signal attenuation caused by mobile users’ mobility. They cause delays when users want to
communicate with the cloud, so QoS is reduced significantly. Two new research directions are CloneCloud and Cloudlets
that are expected to reduce the network delay.

Better Service

The original purpose of mobile cloud computing is providing PC-liked services to mobile terminals. However, as
the existing different features between mobile devices and PCs, we cannot directly transplant the services from PCs’
platform to mobile devices. Therefore, further research should try to identify the method on how to provide suitable and
friendly interactive services for mobile devices.

Pricing

Using services in MCC involves with both mobile service provider (MSP) and cloud service provider (CSP).
However, MSPs and CSPs have different services management, customers’ management, methods of payment and prices.
Therefore, this will lead to many issues, i.e., how to set price, how the price will be divided among different entities, and
how the customers pay. For example, when a mobile user runs mobile gaming application on the cloud, this involves the
game service provider (providing a game license), mobile service provider (accessing the data through base station), and
cloud service provider (running game engine on data center). The price paid by the game player has to be divided among
these three entities such that all of them are satisfied with the division. It is clear that the business model including pricing
and revenue sharing has to be carefully developed for MCC.

Standard Interface

Interoperability becomes an important issue when mobile users need to interact and communicate with the cloud.
The current interface between mobile users and cloud are mostly based on the web interfaces. However, using web
interfaces may not be the best option. First, web interface is not specifically designed for mobile devices. Therefore, web
interface may have more overhead. Also, compatibility among devices for web interface could be an issue. In this case, the
10 R. Lakshman Naik & S. S. V. N. Sarma

standard protocol, signaling, and interface for interacting between mobile users and cloud would be required to ensure
seamless services. In the future, HTML5 is expected as a promising technique to address this issue. HTML5 WebSockets
offer a interface. However, an extensive performance evaluation and feasibility study have to be performed to ensure that it
will work in MCC efficiently.

Service Convergence

The development and competition of cloud service providers can lead to the fact that in the near future these
services will be differentiated according to the types, cost, availability and quality. Moreover, in some cases, a single cloud
is not enough to meet mobile user’s demands. Therefore, the new scheme is needed in which the mobile users can utilize
multiple clouds in a unified fashion. In this case, the scheme should be able to automatically discover and compose
services for user. One of the potential solution of this issue is the sky computing, which will be the next step of cloud
computing. Sky computing is a computing model where resources from multiple clouds providers are leveraged to create a
large scale distributed infrastructure [21]. Similarly, the mobile sky computing will enable providers to support a cross-
cloud communication and enable users to implement mobile services and applications. However, to offer a service to
mobile user in a unified way, the service integration (i.e., convergence) would need to be explored.

CONCLUSIONS

1. With the high increasing of data computation in commerce and science, the capacity of data processing has been
considered as a strategic resource in many countries.

2. Mobile cloud computing (MCC), as a development and extension of mobile computing (MC) and cloud
computing (CC), has inherited the high mobility and scalability, and become a hot research topic in recent years.

3. Mobile cloud computing is one of mobile technology trends in the future since it combines the advantages of both
mobile computing and cloud computing, thereby providing optimal services for mobile users.

4. According to a recent study, more than 240 million business will use cloud services through mobile devices by
2015. That traction will push the revenue of mobile cloud computing to $5.2 billion. With this importance, this
article has provided an overview of mobile cloud computing in which its definitions, architecture, and advantages
have been presented.

5. The applications supported by mobile cloud computing including mobile commerce, mobile learning, and mobile
healthcare have capability of wide range of mobile services.

6. The quality of communication in wired network is better than in wireless network, so reducing the proportion of
data delivery in wireless environment is an effective way to improve the quality. In addition, upgrading bandwidth
is envisaged to be a simple way to increase performance but it incurs additional cost to users.

7. Deploying an effective elastic application division mechanism is deemed to be the best solution to guarantee the
application service in MCC, its complicated, but promising high impact results.

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