Cloud Services in Mobile Environments - The IU-ATC UK-India Mobile Cloud Proxy Function.
Adetola Oredope, Aaron McConnell, Cathryn Peoples, Reena Singh, Timothy A. Gonsalves, Klaus Moessner, Gerard P. Parr · Ulster University Research Portal (Ulster University) · 2013
Mobile networks currently play a key role in theevolution of the Internet due to exponential increase in demandfor Internet-enabled mobile devices and applications. This hasled to various demands to re-think basic designs of the currentInternet architecture, investigating new and innovative ways inwhich key functionalities such as end-to-end connectivity,mobility, security, cloud services and future requirements can beadded to its foundational core design. In this paper, weinvestigate, propose and design a functional element, known asthe mobile cloud proxy, that enables the seamless integration andextension of core cloud services on the public Internet into mobilenetworks. The mobile cloud proxy function addresses currentlimitations in the deployment of cloud services in mobilenetworks tackling limitations such as dynamic resourceallocation, transport protocols, application caching and security.This is achieved by leveraging advances in software-defined radios (SDRs) and networks (SDNs) to dynamically interface key functions within the mobile and Internet domains. We also present some early benchmarking results that feed into the development of the mobile cloud proxy to enable efficient use of resources for cloud based services such as social TV and crop imaging in mobile environments. The benchmarking experiments were carried out within the IU-ATC India-UK research project over a live international testbed which spans across a number of universities in the UK and India.