Architectural tactics for cyber-foraging: Results of a systematic literature review

• Cyber-foraging is a technique to extend computing power of mobile devices.
• We conducted an SLR of architectures for cyber-foraging systems.
• Common design decisions were codified into architectural tactics for cyber-foraging.
• Functional tactics are computation offload, data staging, provisioning and discovery.
• Non-functionals are resource optimization, fault tolerance, scalability and security.

Mobile devices have become for many the preferred way of interacting with the Internet, social media and the enterprise. However, mobile devices still do not have the computing power and battery life that will allow them to perform effectively over long periods of time, or for executing applications that require extensive communication, computation, or low latency. Cyber-foraging is a technique to enable mobile devices to extend their computing power and storage by offloading computation or data to more powerful servers located in the cloud or in single-hop proximity. This article presents the results of a systematic literature review (SLR) on architectures that support cyber-foraging. Elements of the identified architectures were codified in the form of Architectural Tactics for Cyber-Foraging. These tactics will help architects extend their design reasoning toward cyber-foraging as a way to support the mobile applications of the present and the future.

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