NeTS: Small: Collaborative Research: Network-Centric Mobile Cloud Computing

移动云计算(MCC)通过将昂贵的本地计算迁移到云上来解决移动设备的资源限制。然而，从移动设备到云的无线数据传输也会消耗能源。因此，如何在保证移动应用性能的同时最大限度地降低能耗是MCC的关键问题。与单纯从应用角度关注降低无线传输成本的传统解决方案不同，本项目侧重于从以网络为中心的角度设计MCC方案，通过研究、制定和缓解无线网络的特殊特性对MCC能量效率的影响。这项拟议的研究可以通过延长终端用户的电池寿命和提高其性能，使拥有各种移动设备的终端用户受益。这项研究的结果可能会在以网络为中心的角度支持MCC方面形成新的研究方向。该项目将邀请代表人数不足的学生参与拟议的研究，该项目的学术发现将向社会广泛传播。该项目旨在通过缓解无线网络的两个特殊特性：无线接口的长尾问题和无线链路的质量变化来提高MCC的性能。具体地说，本项目由三个紧密交织的研究主题组成：(I)减少向远程云传输程序状态时的尾部能量，同时确保能够满足移动应用的性能要求；(Ii)缓解无线链路质量对能量和性能的影响，最大限度地减少无线链路质量较低时应用性能的下降；(Iii)通过用户合作，利用移动用户之间的无线链路质量差异，进一步提高MCC的能效。将开发一个实验测试台来研究无线网络特性对MCC的实际影响，并对所提出的MCC方案进行评估。

Mobile cloud computing (MCC) has been used to address the resource limitation of mobile devices by migrating expensive local computations to the cloud. However, transmitting data wirelessly from mobile devices to the cloud also consumes energy. Hence, the key problem of MCC is how to minimize the energy consumption while preserving the mobile application performance. Different from traditional solutions which focus on reducing the cost of wireless transmission solely from the application perspective, this project focuses on designing MCC schemes from a network-centric perspective, by investigating, formulating, and mitigating the impact of special characteristics of wireless networks on the energy efficiency of MCC. The proposed research could benefit end users with various mobile devices by extending their battery lifetime and improving their performance. The results from this research are likely to foster new research directions on supporting MCC from a network-centric perspective. The project will engage under-represented students in the proposed research, and the scholarly discovery of this project will be disseminated broadly to the community. This project aims to improve the performance of MCC by mitigating the impacts of two special characteristics of wireless networks: the long-tail problem at the wireless interface and the quality variations of the wireless link. More specifically, this project consists of three closely intertwined research thrusts: (i) reducing the amount of tail energy when transmitting the program states to the remote cloud, while ensuring that the performance requirements of mobile applications can be met; (ii) mitigating the impact of wireless link quality on both energy and performance, and minimizing the degradation of application performance when the wireless link quality is low; and (iii) exploiting the difference of wireless link quality among mobile users to further improve the energy efficiency of MCC via user cooperation. An experimental testbed will be developed to investigate the practical impact of wireless network characteristics on MCC and evaluate the proposed MCC schemes.