A cloud-powered driver-less printing system for smartphones
Seungeun Chung, Shuiqing Wang, Injong Rhee · 2013
Smart devices such as smartphones and tablets are becoming more powerful and versatile enough to replace conventional personal computers. Despite the rapid evolution in their capabilities, controlling peripherals such as network printers directly from smart devices is still in the primitive stage due to the lack of dedicated drivers. We propose and prototype a cloud-powered, driver-less printing system called CloudBridge for ubiquitous printing support from off the shelf smart devices. The CloudBridge service, which runs on a smart device, operates as a communication bridge connecting a network printer and a cloud server. By using cloud's ability to translate the operation commands into a language that the printer can understand, it is possible for a smart device to control the printer without having dedicated drivers. CloudBridge achieves the true meaning of ubiquitous mobile printing: it does not require any prerequisite settings. Compared to most widely used mobile printing solutions, the operation time is reasonable, compensating for the time and effort required for setting up the solution. CloudBridge is further optimized to improve the quality of experience, such as response time and energy consumption of the smart device, by adopting an adaptive compression method.