Mobile Cloud Middleware

• Mobile and cloud computing may be bonded based on delegation or offloading.
• Massive data-intensive processing is invoked asynchronously from the mobile.
• Attaching/detaching mechanisms requires loose integration through middleware.
• Hybrid cloud service integration for mobiles needs a high level Web API abstraction.
• We examine the mobile cloud paradigm from a service oriented perspective.

Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) is arising as a prominent research area that is seeking to bring the massive advantages of the cloud to the constrained smartphones. Mobile devices are looking towards cloud-aware techniques, driven by their growing interest to provide ubiquitous PC-like functionality to mobile users. These functionalities mainly target at increasing storage and computational capabilities. Smartphones may integrate those functionalities from different cloud levels, in a service oriented manner within the mobile applications, so that a mobile task can be delegated by direct invocation of a service. However, developing these kind of mobile cloud applications requires to integrate and consider multiple aspects of the clouds, such as resource-intensive processing, programmatically provisioning of resources (Web APIs) and cloud intercommunication. To overcome these issues, we have developed a Mobile Cloud Middleware (MCM) framework, which addresses the issues of interoperability across multiple clouds, asynchronous delegation of mobile tasks and dynamic allocation of cloud infrastructure. MCM also fosters the integration and orchestration of mobile tasks delegated with minimal data transfer. A prototype of MCM is developed and several applications are demonstrated in different domains. To verify the scalability of MCM, load tests are also performed on the hybrid cloud resources. The detailed performance analysis of the middleware framework shows that MCM improves the quality of service for mobiles and helps in maintaining soft-real time responses for mobile cloud applications.