Information Sharing and Communications with Mobile Cloud Technology

Abstract

The use of mobile devices (e.g., smartphones, tablet computers, and PDAs) has steadily increased in recent years. At the same time the cloud-based applications have greatly enhanced the computing capabilities to these mobile devices. Therefore, the emergence of mobile-cloud technology is promising for offloading computations to the cloud. In this chapter we explore the state-of-the-art research in mobile-cloud technology and discuss the integration of the mobile devices and cloud-based applications. We begin by describing the mobile-cloud architecture and its functional components. Next, we explore the applications (e.g., education, healthcare, disaster management, etc.) and related challenges (e.g., bandwidth utilization, latency, connectivity, etc.) with the mobile-cloud technology. Finally, we outline the issues associated to these applications that need to be improved upon for delivering a more scalable and resource-enhanced mobile-cloud technology to the users.