World Applied Sciences Journal 33 (12): 1798-1805, 2015
ISSN 1818-4952
© IDOSI Publications, 2015
DOI: 10.5829/idosi.wasj.2015.33.12.310
7th May, 2015. This work is sponsored and supported by the University Malaysia Pahang.
Corresponding Author: Mushtaq Ali, Faculty of Computer Systems and Software Engineering University Malaysia Pahang,
Lebuhraya Tun, Razak, 23600 Kuantan Pahang, Malaysia.
1798
Taxonomy of Computational Offloading in Mobile Devices
Mushtaq Ali, Jasni Mohamed Zain, Mohammad Fadli Zolkipli, Gran Badshah
Faculty of Computer Systems and Software Engineering,
University Malaysia Pahang, Lebuhraya Tun, Razak, 23600 Kuantan Pahang, Malaysia
Abstract: The benefits of mobility, convenience and convergence powered mobile devices the first choice for
computation, communication and entertaining. However, these devices lack in resources for computation,
networking, memory and battery. An effective approach to alleviate the constraints of mobile devices is to
offload resource-intensive/ compute intensive components of mobile applications to resource
abundant/resourceful servers for processing; called Cyber Foraging / Computational Offloading.We explain
theaugmentation approaches of mobile’s resources, cyber foraging system’s matrices and the taxonomy of the
existing cyber foraging approaches considering their type, granularity, surrogate types, parameters of
decision,location of the decision maker units, remoteness of execution, migration support and their overheads.
At the end, issues are discussed on the basis of comparative studies.
Key words: Cyber Foraging Mobile Computing Surrogates Mobile Devices
INTRODUCTION relative disadvantage” [2]. By the Report of NRC
The dependency of new generation on mobile resources issues of mobile devices stated that [3] “Using
devices is increasing each coming day. In the whole new materials and chemistries, batteries are approaching
planet of around 6.8 billion people, 4.6 billion people explosives in terms of energy density”. Mobile batteries
reached to cell phone subscription at the end of 2009 and are in such case the stick of dynamites which are in our
is likely reach to five billion by the end of 2010 [1]. People pockets. The fortunate thing is the energy released by the
are tied up in doing tasks all around them through their batteries is in intervals and over many hours rather than
mobile devices, such as Internet banking, using routing few microseconds. But an effect of the quote is, the basic
applications, surfing internet and communications. improvement of battery technology is very low and the
Moreover the mobile devices are blossomed with new density of batteries is already very high. The additional
features in terms of graphics, speed, memory and sensing improvement of batteries is probable but that
which are interesting for users. Also the new mobile improvement is drained by the energy demand of new
applications make them attractive and acceptable for each mobile’s applications. It is therefore essential to seek
age group. some alternative solutions of combating low resources
On the other hand, the local resources of mobile (battery) issues.
devices are restricted by the limitation of size and weight To overcome the issues related to the resource
which are the primary market demands. Mahadev scarceness of mobile devices, parallel research working on
Satyanarayanan in 1993 stated in a key note that “Mobile to reduce the local computation at mobile devices and that
elements are resource-poor relative to static elements. will leads us to some successful results [4]. Computational
Regardless of future technological advances, a mobile offloading is one of the practical technique which can be
unit’s weight, power, size and ergonomics will always used to reduce the burden over handheld devices and
render it less computationally capable than its static effectively leverage the resources to work speedy and
counterpart. While mobile elements will undoubtedly smoothly. Computational Offloading defined to offload
improve in absolute ability, they will always be at a the complete or a portion of a mobile app to a resourceful
(National Researched Council) held in 1997 on low
brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk
provided by UMP Institutional Repository