Article Preview
Top1. Introduction
In recent years, the term “cloud computing'' has emerged. Cloud computing is the on-demand provision of computing resources, particularly storage (cloud storage) and computing power, without the user having to manage these resources directly. Traditionally, the cloud has been defined as a collection of powerful computers such as servers, workstations, and personal computers. In contrast, traditional cloud computing systems prioritize performance above power or energy economy. This has led to researchers looking for energy-efficient alternatives (H. Ba et al., 2013).
As mobile devices such as smartphones become more powerful and widespread, mobile computing may become one of the most effective strategies. Some of the most significant difficulties with present mobile computing technology are also mentioned in the research. Figure 1 illustrates this. The mobile computing market in India is second largest in the world, with 439 million users.
Figure 1. Number of mobile users in top 10 countries
As per Google reports, 2.8 billion Android users are active in the world today, a statistic that is continuously rising (Noor et al, 2018). This is particularly accurate for underdeveloped nations. The issue of energy usage in these gadgets has begun to receive more attention as a result of this.
As a result of Mobile Cloud Computing, customers, network operators, and cloud service providers have access to rich computing resources via mobile computing, cloud computing, and wireless networks (Khan et.al, 2014). By utilizing computational augmentation methods, resource-restricted mobile devices can utilize the computational resources of cloud-based resources (Abolfazli et.al, 2013). A general mobile cloud architecture is shown in figure 2.
A mobile computing cloud consists of a mobile computing entity, a mobile computing entity, a distant mobile cloud, and a hybrid cloud (Khan et.al, 2015).
Figure 2. Architecture of mobile cloud computing
By offloading computations from mobile devices, big and complex computations can be performed on powerful cloud servers instead of resource-limited mobile devices. By doing this, the functionality of the application is maintained while dramatically reducing the power needs of mobile devices. Section 2 talks about the dangers of mobile technologies and energy issues. Section 3 of the paper focuses on applications and opportunities in mobile computing. The paper presents Risk factors for Mobile users in section 4. Further, challenges in mobile cloud computing and energy efficient way using static channels is discussed in section 5 and 6 respectively. Section 7 of this paper proposes the future research initiatives in the field of mobile cloud computing that should be prioritized based on these challenges.
Table 1.
Various categories of cloud infrastructure attributes where H, M, L represents high, medium, low respectively
| Applications | Compute intensity | Network bandwidth | Network latency |
| E-mails (Gmail, Outlook etc.) | L | L | H |
| Social networking (Facebook) | L | M | M |
| Web browsing | L | L | H |
| Online gaming | H | M | L |
| Augmented reality | H | M | L |
| Face recognition | H | M | L |
| HD video streaming | H | H | L |
| Language translation | H | M | L |