Cloud Services in Mobile Environments – The IU-ATC UK-India Mobile Cloud Proxy Function

Inhalt:
Mobile networks currently play a key role in the evolution of the Internet due to exponential increase in demand for Internet-enabled mobile devices and applications. This has led to various demands to re-think basic designs of the current Internet architecture, investigating new and innovative ways in which key functionalities such as end-to-end connectivity, mobility, security, cloud services and future requirements can be added to its foundational core design. In this paper, we investigate, propose and design a functional element, known as the mobile cloud proxy, that enables the seamless integration and extension of core cloud services on the public Internet into mobile networks. The mobile cloud proxy function addresses current limitations in the deployment of cloud services in mobile networks tackling limitations such as dynamic resource allocation, 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. Index Terms — Mobile, cloud, LTE, cloud proxy, social TV.