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PROJET

MCC
Mobile Cloud Computing

Anne Universitaire : 2014/2015

I. INTRODUCTION
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) 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). The limited resources significantly
impede the improvement of service qualities. Cloud computing (CC) has been widely
recognized as the next generations 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. As a result, mobile applications can be rapidly provisioned and
released with the minimal management efforts or service providers interactions.
With the explosion of mobile applications and the support of CC for a variety of
services for mobile users, mobile cloud computing (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.[1]

II. OVERVIEW OF MOBILE CLOUD COMPUTING


The term mobile cloud computing was introduced not long after the concept of cloud
computing launched in mid-2007. It has been attracting the attentions of
entrepreneurs as a profitable business option that reduces the development and running
cost of mobile applications, of mobile users as a new technology to achieve rich
experience of a variety of mobile services at low cost, and of researchers as a
promising solution for green IT [1].
II.1.What is Mobile Cloud Computing?

The Mobile Cloud Computing Forum defines MCC as follows [3]:


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
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smartphone users but a much broader range of mobile subscribers.


Aepona [4] 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.
Alternatively, MCC can be defined as a combination of mobile web and cloud
computing, which is the most popular tool for mobile users to access applications and
services on the Internet. Briefly, MCC provides mobile users with the data processing
and storage services in clouds. The mobile devices do not need a powerful
configuration (e.g., CPU speed and memory capacity) since all the complicated
computing modules can be processed in the clouds.
II.2.ARCHITECTURES OF MOBILE CLOUD COMPUTING

Figure 1: Mobile cloud computing architecture [2]

Fig. 1 represents the general architecture of Mobile Cloud Computing. In Fig. 1,


mobile devices are connected to the mobile networks via base stations (e.g. base
transceiver station (BTS), access point, or satellite) that establish and control the
connections (air links) and functional interfaces between the networks and mobile
devices. Mobile users' requests and information (e.g. ID and location) are transmitted
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to the central processors that are connected to servers providing mobile network
services. Here, mobile network operators can provide services to mobile users as AAA
(for authentication, authorization, and accounting) based on the home agent (HA) and
subscribers' data stored in databases. After that, the subscribers' requests are delivered
to a cloud through the Internet. In the cloud, cloud controllers process the requests to
provide mobile users with the corresponding cloud services. These services are
developed with the concepts of utility computing, virtualization, and service-oriented
architecture (e.g. web, application and database servers) [5].
II.3.CLOUD SERVICES USING MIDDLEWARE

The MCC architecture includes a mobile client and a middleware design. The
middleware acts as a proxy that is hosted on the cloud platforms which provide mobile
clients access to cloud services. The middleware improves interaction between mobile
clients and cloud services, for example, adaptation, optimization and caching. The
middleware also provides extended functions to mobile clients, such as service
mashup. In general, the middleware enhances the functionality, reliability and
compatibility of the interaction between mobile clients and cloud services .
II.3.1. Role of Middleware in MCC
II.3.1.1. Loss of connection

1. Client and middleware caching - Copies of service results are stored on both mobile
clients and the middleware. When the mobile clients are not able to connect to the
middleware, the client-side cache is used. When the middleware to WS connection is
not available, the middleware returns its cached data to the mobile clients.
2. Middleware push - When the middleware receives an update of service result, it
immediately sends the update to mobile clients that are connected to the middleware.
When the mobile clients detect an available network connection, they automatically
establish a connection to the middleware.
II.3.1.2.Bandwidth/Latency

1. Protocol transformation - It reduces the latency as well as bandwidth of the client to


service interaction. The middleware reduces processing time as well as the size of the
messages.
2. Result optimization - It reduces the size of the service results, thus reduces the
bandwidth used to interact with WS. The middleware converts the format of service
results and removes unnecessary data from the original service result. Less data
transferring also reduces network latency.
II.3.1.3.Limited resource

1. Cloud Computing - Connecting mobile clients to cloud computing extends the


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resources of mobile clients in a cost-efficient way. Cloud services extend the


functionalities of mobile clients, while cloud platforms provide computational power
to mobile clients. The middleware is designed to be hosted on cloud platforms like
GAE and Amazon EC2. Scalability is the top concern of the middleware. Cloud
platforms provide automatic scaling for the middleware.
2. Personal Mashup Platform - Service mashup allow mobile client to combine
different services. However, service mashup requires interaction with WS and
processing power. Because of the resources limitation (energy, processing power,
software libraries) of the mobile clients, it is inefficient to do service mashup on the
mobile clients. The middleware provides a Personal Mashup Platform which does
service mashup for the mobile clients. The platform has generic interfaces for defining
and consuming WS. The services are stored on the middleware and can be connected
to form a work flow (a mashup service) which provides a possibility for caching
intermediate service results.

III.

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
1) Extending battery lifetime: Battery is one of the main concerns for mobile devices.
Several solutions have been proposed to enhance the CPU performance and to manage
the disk and screen in an intelligent manner 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.
2) 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
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space on their mobile devices since all images are sent and processed on the clouds.
Flickr and ShoZu are also the successful mobile photo sharing applications based on
MCC. 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, playing
chess or broadcasting multimedia services 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.
3) 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. Also, the cloud can remotely provide to mobile users
with security services such as virus scanning, malicious code detection, and
authentication. 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 finegrained, 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.

IV.MOBILE CLOUD COMPUTING CHALLENGES


The MCC challenges can be broadly classified into three categories:
Technical Challenges
Security Challenges
Miscellaneous challenges
IV.1.MCC TECHNICAL CHALLENGES

A. Data Latency
MCC is based on wireless network interfaces. Data transfer in a wireless network is
not as continuous and consistent as in a dedicated wired LAN. This results for longer
time intervals for data transfer at times. Also, the distance from the source leads to
longer time intervals observed for data transfer and other network related activities due
to an increased number of intermediate network hops. Data latency will directly
impact the usability of an application by a mobile user.
B. Service Availability
Service unavailability will prevent mobile users from accessing a cloud service.
Inability to connect to the cloud to obtain service can be due to a service down
scenario, traffic congestion, network failures, etc. To mitigate this challenge
application on a mobile should be able to work in offline mode. The application user
needs to be informed of this and the application will run with limited functionality.
However data manipulated needs to be synced when the application is connected next
time. However supporting offline mode has its own challenges to work as expected.
C. Heterogeneity
In MCC we are dealing with highly heterogeneous networks in terms of wireless
network interfaces. A wide gamut of radio access technologies are used to access the
cloud from mobile devices [4]. These technologies include WCDMA, GPRS,
WiMAX, WLAN, etc. This heterogeneity of networks makes it complex on the cloud
services and applications on the mobile to adapt to different networks shifts.
D. Adapting To Networks Shifts and Platforms
Applications running on mobiles in a MCC platform needs to be intelligent enough to
adapt to the varying network capacities and should be accessible through different
platforms without any loss of data. For example, a user working on a device should be
able to get on to a different device and still be able to access the application which he
was working on formerly, without facing any data loss.
IV.2.MCC SECURITY CHALLENGES
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The security challenges for a mobile cloud scenario can be broadly classified into three
categories:
Cloud Service Challenges
Communication Channel Challenges
Mobile Application Challenges
A. Cloud Service Challenges
Integrity of Data in Cloud
Integrity of data in a MCC scenario is an important data security challenge. There is
data integrity risks associated with the way cloud service providers provide
redundancy. For example, when someone deletes data stored in the cloud doesn't
necessarily imply that every fragment of data backed up in geographically separate
data centers has also been deleted. The use of CDN technologies and other data
caching mechanism on the cloud and on the mobile application potentially risks the
integrity of data.
Access to Data on Cloud Storage
A cloud vendor often expose services to directly access cloud storage from a client
mobile application, or our services in the cloud forms a gateway to access cloud
storage. But often times, if every access to cloud storage is not authenticated and
verified, then a compromised mobile application can allow an unauthorized intruder to
read, delete or manipulate private data in the cloud.
Malicious Content Injection
A compromised mobile application or any other wrong intended external activity can
be adopted by an intruder to inject malicious content like corrupt media content,
scripts in case of web content based services, etc to contaminate a cloud service by
destabilizing the processing ability of the service, which may result in unavailability of
the service or the cloud service behaving unexpectedly.
Attack on Service Availability
In a MCC scenario, a compromised mobile application can be a potential attack point
to launch a DDOS kind of attack on cloud datacenters and services, putting immense
load on the cloud server eventually resulting in a server down scenario or service
unavailability. The increased adoption of cloud computing has put tons of data and
services from different organizations concentrated on the cloud in the same datacenter, due to which the vulnerability to distributed DOS has increased manifold.
B. Communication Channel Challenges
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Data Leak
Data security threats are continuing to evolve unfazed. In today's increasingly
distributed communication model, the inclusion of mobiles increases the risk of data
leak during transit. MCC works on wireless networks, which are not as secured as
wired networks. Besides, the frequent shifts in networks for mobiles, requires dealing
with different security level of the channel. If the channel is not secured end to end, an
intruder can take advantage of it to peep into confidential data on the channel.
Data Tampering
Safeguarding tampering of data in transit remains a challenge till date and even more
so in a MCC scenario. Using a public Wi-Fi or mobile data networks to access cloud
services can be potentially unsafe. A man in the middle attack can manipulate the data
in the channel, which can inadvertently affect the stability of an application on the
device or a cloud service.

C. Mobile Application Challenges


Unauthorized Cloud Access
A misplaced or a stolen mobile device can give an unauthorized person easy avenue to
cloud services. This makes the information on the cloud at risk as it can be easily
uncovered or stolen. For enterprises, the repercussion of a lost company-supplied
mobile device is critical as it can give away confidential information that can land in
wrong hands.
Access to Private Data on Mobile
A compromised mobile application or a cloud service can be a potential avenue to
access confidential information on a mobile. Storing passwords on a personal or
company supplied smartphone and using it for accessing company data on cloud is a
high risk activity. A cloud service that is not designed properly can become a potential
avenue for an intruder to access private data inputs from a mobile application. An
intruder may modify an unsecured service configuration file to prompt a user for
private data during service response. A web application residing in the cloud can also
be a potential avenue for an intruder to inject script that can uncover private data on
the mobile.

IV.3.MCC MISCELLANEOUS CHALLENGES

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Other than the above discussed technical and security challenges to MCC, there are
few others that pose as potential hurdles.
A. Network Accessibility
Internet is the backbone of MCC and the evolution of MCC is to a great extend fueled
by internet evolution. Therefore without network access MCC is paralyzed.
B. Compliance of the Cloud
Data in the cloud is essentially stored on multiple servers, sometimes spanning across
several countries. Different countries have different regulations on the data stored in
the country. Regulations can be based on law of the land, organization level regulation,
etc. These different regulations pose compliance on the type of data that can be hosted
in cloud. For example, financial data cannot be hosted in cloud, etc. These compliance
issues will invariably affect a MCC user and in scenarios like a certain datacenter
develops an issue and cannot be accessed, the problem for the client company will
only intensify if the data is stored in a server of a different country.

V. CONCLUSION
The future prospects for MCC are virtually limitless. Internet technologies continue to
evolve. Innovations in mobile hardware are on the fast track. Cloud computing is fast
extending its roots as an essential part of today's IT infrastructure. MCC continues to
evolve as the future computing model. But it has substantial hurdles to overcome to
reach its full potential. Cloud computing which introduced a new business model, now
has to innovate with customizations specific for mobile devices keeping MCC in
mind .Strong and innovative security mechanisms have to be incorporated to obstruct
any wrong doings, while respecting the mobile constraints. Innovations in these
directions have already gained steam. The full potential of MCC can only be
unleashed, if computation and storage is offloaded into the cloud, without hurting user
interactivity, introducing latency or limiting application possibilities. The vision going
forward is a handheld device that has limitless power and a precious gift to human
race.

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VI.

REFERENCES

[1] Dinh, H. T., Lee, C., Niyato, D. and Wang, P. (2013), A survey of mobile cloud computing:
architecture, applications, and approaches. Wirel. Commun. Mob. Comput., 13: 15871611.
doi: 10.1002/wcm.1203
[2] Hoang T. Dinh, Chonho Lee, Dusit Niyato and Ping Wang
A Survey of Mobile Cloud Computing: Architecture, Applications, and Approaches
Available: http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~cshen/367/papers/survey_MCC.pdf
[3] http://www.mobilecloudcomputingforum.com/
[4] White Paper, Mobile Cloud Computing Solution Brief, AEPONA, November 2010
[5]. D.E.Bakken et al., "Middleware Support for Voting and Data Fusion", in Proc. 2001
International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks(formerly: FTCS), July 01-04,
2001, p.453-462.
[6] Hazarika, P.; Baliga, V.; Tolety, S.
Wireless and Optical Communications Networks (WOCN), 2014 Eleventh International
Conference on, 2014, Pages: 1 - 5, DOI: 10.1109/WOCN.2014.6923101, IEEE Conference
Publications

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Contents
I.

INTRODUCTION...............................................................................................................3

II. OVERVIEW OF MOBILE CLOUD COMPUTING..........................................................3


II.1. What is Mobile Cloud Computing?.................................................................................3
II.2. ARCHITECTURES OF MOBILE CLOUD COMPUTING...........................................4
II.3. CLOUD SERVICES USING MIDDLEWARE...............................................................5
II.3.1. Role of Middleware in MCC....................................................................................5
III.

ADVANTAGES OF MOBILE CLOUD COMPUTING.................................................6

IV.

MOBILE CLOUD COMPUTING CHALLENGES.......................................................8

IV.1. MCC TECHNICAL CHALLENGES............................................................................8


IV.2. MCC SECURITY CHALLENGES...............................................................................9
IV.3. MCC MISCELLANEOUS CHALLENGES................................................................11
V. CONCLUSION..................................................................................................................11
VI.

REFERENCES..............................................................................................................12

Figures
FIGURE 1: MOBILE CLOUD COMPUTING ARCHITECTURE [2]...................................................................4

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