Study on Various QoS Issue in Mobile Cloud ...

Study on Various QoS Issue in Mobile Cloud Computing and Future Direction Arif Ahmed1,† , Abadhan Saumya Sabyasachi1 and Esha Barlaskar2 1

Department of Computer Science and Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Silchar, India. 2 Don Bosco University, Guwahati. e-mail: † [email protected]

Abstract. Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) is a part of cloud computing that deals with the various issues of cloud services when it is accessed from the mobile or portable devices in wireless environment. When cloud services are accessed from the mobile terminal, many additional challenging issues such as power constraints, offloading technique, low bandwidth etc. are arises in this field. Quality of Service (QoS) is one of the challenging topic in this field mainly deals with how the services should be provided to MCC client that can be achieved high QoS. There are several techniques have been used to provide services in high QoS in mobile cloud computing. This paper presents several causes of QoS issues in MCC and describes previous works related with QoS schemes in MCC. In the conclusion part, we summarize this paper and gave a view of future direction on QoS issue in MCC. Keywords:

Mobile cloud computing, MCC, Offloadin, Quality-of-service, QoS.

1. Introduction In the last few years, rapid growth in cloud computing market and its uses in different field are reflecting from the different survey [2,3]. In Mobile Cloud Computing, cloud computing services are accessed from the mobile/portable devices [2]. In MCC, Both storage and computation is performed in the cloud server using offloading technique, thus solving serious challenging issues in normal mobile computing. Mobile cloud user takes the advantages of both cloud computing services and mobile services. According to the A. N. Khan et al. [1], MCC can be defined as A service that allows resource constrained mobile users to adaptively adjust processing and storage capabilities by transparently partitioning and offloading the computationally intensive and storage demanding jobs on traditional cloud resources by providing ubiquitous wireless access. The rapid growth of MCC both in market and academic can be seen in the last few years [2]. According to the survey in US, the number of internet users accessing from the mobile devices will be outnumber from the PCs users [3]. Now a days, many application such as healthcare [4], e-learning [5], mobile game [6] etc. are found using MCC due to cloud computing advantages such as easy to access, scalability, adaptability. Although mobile cloud computing brings lots of advantages over the normal cloud computing in the context of accessibility, but it has many challenging due to the fact that it is accessed from the low configure devices (i.e. Mobile, Tablets etc.) and accessing medium is wireless (i.e. GPRS, 248

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Editors: K. R. Venugopal and L. M. Patnaik

pp. 248–255.

Study on Various QoS Issue in Mobile Cloud Computing and Future Direction

Wi-Fi, 3G etc.). A simple framework of mobile cloud computing (MCC) is shown in the Figure 1. The major differences that brought attention to the researcher about the problems of MCC are: Accessibility nature, resource constrain, Processing power, user mobility etc. Quality-of-service is an active research topic in every field for providing good services of applications. Quality is defined in international ISO 840 as the totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs. In other words, we can define QoS is a set of non-functional values that impact the quality of a service offer by an application. QoS plays a great role in mobile cloud computing i.e. how a cloud provider will ensure that the service is satisfied to its customer. QoS can be achieved in different way: Run time related QoS, Transaction related QoS and Security related QoS for an application. In mobile cloud computing, Quality-of-Service is one of the challenging issue. In this paper, we present a survey on the different category of QoS issue in mobile cloud computing. Later on we described, very challenging problem that affect the Quality-of-issue and related work on that issue. In section 2, we described different category of QoS measurement function. Section 3 introduce major causes of MCC that Figure 1. Mobile cloud computing affect QoS and in section 4, we described major works that have architecture. been done in related with QoS in mobile cloud computing. In the last section, we make conclusion with future direction. 2. Categories of QoS Research on Quality-of-Service is active in every field. There are in many ways QoS can be categorized (Table 1). Each category has a set of measurement entity. Broadly we are describing QoS into three categories: 1. Run time Related to QoS: When the QoS management process is done according to the changing environment then its call run time related QoS. Run time related QoS parameter is achieved in the issues such as scalability, reliability, availability etc. Since mobile cloud computing is accessed from the wireless medium, QoS value is decreased due to dynamic network condition such mobility, network congestion etc. 2. Transaction Support Related QoS: Database transaction is very prone in mobile cloud computing. During the whole transaction, it is high chances to loss the data, it leads to the decrease in QoS. 3. Security Related QoS: Authentication users and keeping data secure are challenging issues in cloud computing. Security related QoS deals with security of the system so that system does not degrade its performance. 3. Different QoS Issues in MCC In Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC), mobile users need to access the servers located in a cloud when requesting services and resources in the cloud. However, the mobile users may face some problems such as congestion due to the limitation of wireless bandwidths, network delay, network disconnection, and 249

Arif Ahmed, et al. Table 1. Categories of QoS Achievement. Categorye Runtime Related QoS

Parameter Scalability Capacity Performance Reliability Availability

Transaction

Integrity

Security

Authentication Authorization Confidentiality NonRepudiation

Description It is the system capacity to increase the mobile cloud computing services during the growing number of request from the mobile client. This provides the number of requests that can be provided during a concurrent request. Performance measure the time required to complete a particular task. It can be calculated by Response time, latency , throughput It guarantees the system will perform its required function for a specific period of time. It is closely related to availability It measure the probability of system is up during a particular time. During the database transaction, it can be divided into small unit of portion to guarantee the data integration, working on it by the transaction. The unit(transaction) can be either finished successful where all transactions in the unit commit or all roll back to get their original state in case if the transaction is fail. To keep the system secure, authentication techniques are used to verify the users whether he/she is allowed to use the system or not. Authorization helps to determine what are modules can be accessed by the user. Authorization helps to determine what are modules can be accessed by the user. A user cannot deny requesting a service or data after the fact.

the signal attenuation due to mobile users mobility. They cause delays when users want to communicate with the cloud, so QoS is reduced significantly. This section lists several research issues in MCC, which are related to quality of service to the mobile cloud computing. 1. Resource Constraints: Resources in mobile devices are very limited. Device characteristics such as battery power, screen size, input screen etc. is very poor comparing to laptop, desktop device. Mobile devices are more usable for multimedia application, but video and image processing takes huge power. It always affect the services available in mobile cloud computing. 2. Low Bandwidth: Scarcity of bandwidth remains one of the huge communication problems in MCC. Although new technologies with high bandwidth capability are coming out, but number of mobile user also increasing. Comparing to wired connection, low bandwidth affect many services of MCC. 3. Availability: Service availability remains one of the major issues in MCC due to network congestion, network failure, and out-of-signal etc. 4. Unrealistic Communication Channel: In wireless communication, there is high packet loss ratio and also have bit error rate due to fading and multipath effect. Wireless channel are highly unreliable and have low bandwidth. The wireless medium has been shared by multiple stations so that the bandwidth allocation to one station will be affected by the neighboring stations. 250

Study on Various QoS Issue in Mobile Cloud Computing and Future Direction

5. Node Mobility: In telecommunication, mobile user is dynamic in nature unlike in wired connection where user can access through a connected LAN. Due to mobility, signal strength remains up and down; it gives a huge impact in MCC service performance. 6. Heterogeneity: Heterogeneity affects more complex for end-to-end connection in mobile cloud computing. Although, heterogeneity brings lots of advantages in MCC (such as heterogeneity network solves low bandwidth), still handling heterogeneity communication in MCC is in new state. 7. Routing protocol: Due to the movement of the mobile devices, the network topology of the mobile ad-hoc networks varies dynamically. The existing routes may not be available or may not be able to support the QoS. 4. QoS Related Work in MCC Bandwidth Limitation: Bandwidth is one of the major problems in MCC as it affects the performance of mobile cloud computing applications (Table 2). Author X. Jin et al. [7] gave an architecture to solve the bandwidth problem in which limited bandwidth can be shared by the users requesting from the same location and accessing the same application. But the proposed model can solve only when users are requesting the same application/content. The system does not show who downloaded how much data and which part, this lead to the unfairness in the distributed policy among the users. E. Jung et al. [8] proposed an architecture (RACE) which collects user context data (such as calling profile, signal strength profile, and power profile) periodically and creates decision tables by Markov Decision Process (MDP) algorithm. n tables by using Markov Decision Process (MDP) algorithm. Based on the tables, the users can decide whether or not to help other users to download some contents that they cannot able to receive by themselves due to the bandwidth limitation, and how much it should help (e.g., 10% of contents). Availability: MCC performance is depend on the availability of network communication. G. HuertaCanepa et al. [9] proposed a solution for unavailability where author made a mechanism to search a node in the neighbor of a use whose link is down. After finishing a node that is in safe mode, the provider for the application is changed. Instead of creating link directly to the cloud, mobile user can connect to the cloud vis nearby nodes in an ad-hoc manner. But the proposed system does not consider certain importance issues such as mobility, capability of devices and privacy issues of neighbor nodes. To overcome the drawback in [10], author proposed MoNet that is a WiFi based multi-hop networking system and a distributed content sharing. Network Heterogeneity: In MCC, applications are accessed through various heterogeneous networks (GPRS/3G.WiMax). In[11] author proposed an intelligent access scheme where mobile cloud controller collect the various user contextual information (such as location, context, and requested services). Based on these significant information a heterogeneous access management scheme is developed for the traditional heterogeneous network access scenario. The architecture is built based on the Intelligent Radio Network Access [12]. Network Delay: Due to various reason such as low bandwidth, packet loss etc., network delay occurs in MCC. Mobile user cant access the available resources in the cloud in the required due to delay. In MCC, mobile programs are transferred to cloud and are run at the cloud server. In this type of system, a frequent data transfer is occurred between the cloud and mobile host. This affects QoS for mobile cloud application. To solve above problem, CloneCloud [13] concept is introduced by Intel researcher. CloneCloud used nearby computer or data transfer to run the mobile application, this bring lots of advantages in the 251

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processing speed of the mobile. In this architecture, developer modifies the application to support which part of the program should transfer and clone to data center. After each clone is transferred to the data center and vis, data synchronization is done. Similar to CloneCloud, Cloudlet concept is introduced where a trusted well connected to the internet cluster or high performance computer is deployed near the mobile devices. When a mobile device does not wish to offload any application, they can be find near the CloneCloud. In [14], the authors built architecture through exploiting virtual machine technology to rapidly instantiate customized service software on a nearby cloudlet and then uses that service over a wireless LAN. This technology can help mobile users overcome the limits of cloud computing as WAN latency and low bandwidth. Mobility Management:Mobility is one of issues that decreases performance of mobile application running in cloud. Broadly mobility management can be divided into two: Vertical Handover [16] i.e. management between network heterogeneity and in horizontal Handover [15] mobility management is done within the same network protocol. In [17], author developed a Context-Aware Mobility Management System (CAMMS) for vertical mobility management system for multimedia applications. Cross layer handover scheme in [17], balance the load between different network and try to achieve maximum QoS by utilizing available communication resources. In [18] author proposed a handover decision scheme for mobile communication that uses IEEE 802.21 [19] MIH services in WLAN and WiMAX networks to maintain nearly identical QoS in the handover. 4.1 QoS Enabled Architecture Many mobile cloud computing architectures have been proposed that are primarily based on QoS. These architectures are focused on how to give services according to the QoS parameters. Some of the previous works are reviewed below: In [20] author proposed a QoS aware mobile cloud computing framework and it is an adaptive QoS management process based on the Fuzzy Cognitive Map. Here main goal of the service provider is to ensure QoS for its services. The system monitors QoS status in each mobile terminal and sends the related parameters to the cloud provider. There is some predefined agreement between the client and service provider about the QoS profile such as which service should provide in what condition. These parameters are used for finding the QoS value for each request. In this paper, author experimented taking three QoS parameters: transmission rate, packet loss and cost and three different services. After the simulation, the value of QoS become in stable in independent of initial values of weight. Ye et al. [21] gave a model for handling QoS and power management (QPM) in mobile terminal when a service is accessed from the cloud environment. The main goal of this framework is to reduce the power consumption in mobile terminal with high QoS. It include two module: QPMMD i.e QPM in mobile device which captures user service usage pattern (user profile) from the mobile terminal and aggregate the multiple service pattern running concurrently, the other module i.e. QPM in cloud service which is responsible for predicting appropriate service according to the user profile in mobile terminal. Jiann-Liang Chen et al. [22] proposed a framework for high multimedia application in cloud computing and is based on the novel IP Multimedia system framework. It supports QoS for different networks such as 3G, WiFi and WiMAX. The QoS policies of these services are integrated in cloud computing environment to serve high QoS. This architecture enabled to access high quality multimedia application from the android applications. In [23] author proposed a new model for video streaming in mobile cloud computing based on the device and network properties. The device and network properties are periodically send to the server, 252

Study on Various QoS Issue in Mobile Cloud Computing and Future Direction Table 2. Previous works on QoS issue in MCC. Issue Low bandwidth Low bandwidth Availability Availability Heterogeneity Network Delay Network Delay Mobility Management Mobility Management Mobility Management Service Selection Power/Energy Multimedia Video Streaming

Paper title User-Prole-Driven Collaborative Bandwidth Sharing on Mobile Phones Cloud Assisted P2P Media Streaming for Bandwidth Constrained Mobile Subscribers A virtual cloud computing provider for mobile devices WiFace: A Secure Geo-Social Networking System Using WiFi-based Multi-hop MANET Access Schemes for Mobile Cloud Computing CloneCloud: Elastic Execution between Mobile Device and Cloud The Case for VM-Based Cloudlets in Mobile Computing SASHAA Quality-Oriented Handover Algorithm for Multimedia Content Delivery to Mobile Users A terminal-controlled vertical handover decision scheme in IEEE 802.21-enabled heterogeneous wireless networks 802.21-2008 - IEEE Standard for Local and metropolitan area networks - Media Independent Handover Services A QoS Aware System For Mobile Cloud Computing A Framework for QoS and Power Management in a Service Cloud Environment with Mobile Devices IMS Cloud Computing Architecture for High-Quality Multimedia Applications A Network and Device Aware QoS Approach for Cloud-Based Mobile Streaming

Techniques used User Contextual Data, HMM p2p, coalition ARIMA

MCC/MC MCC

game,

MCC

With the help of nearby connected node WiFi-based Multi-hop MANET

MCC

Contextual Data, IRNA

MCC

Offloading

MCC

Offloading

MCC

MCC

Context-Aware Mobility Management System, Cross Layer Mobility IEEE 802.21

MC

———

MC

FCM User Profile, Behavior

MC

MCC Power

MCC

——–

MCC

Network and Device Properties, Video Encoding

MCC

based on this video streaming properties such as bitrate, frame rate etc. are changed in real time. This brings high quality of service in multimedia application particularly in wireless environment where signal strength remains changeable. 5. Conclusions and Future Work We have seen QoS is one of the challenging issues in mobile cloud computing. High QoS value of an application can be achieved using different technique in MCC. Here in this paper, we have surveyed 253

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many causes related with QoS issues in mobile cloud computing and presented QoS related works that have been done so far in this field. However, there are many issues that are still needed to improve such as QoS in mobility management, Service level agreement, QoS in cost modeling etc. Service level agreement (SLA) is a form of contract agreed in between the mobile client and cloud service provider on the issue of service selection. A significant Quality-of-Service can be achieved using an appropriate technique with SLA in mobile cloud computing. The agreement may be based on the different level. Finally we have summarized the survey in tabular format.

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