Cloud-based Real-time location tracking and messaging system: A child-care case study Cong-Thinh Huynh Department of Computer Engineering Kyung Hee University Yongin, South Korea thinhhc@gmail.com Huu-Quoc Nguyen Department of Computer Engineering Kyung Hee University Yongin, South Korea huuquoc09@gmail.com Xuan-Qui Pham Department of Computer Engineering Kyung Hee University Yongin, South Korea pxuanqui@gmail.com Tien-Dung Nguyen Department of Computer Engineering Kyung Hee University Yongin, South Korea ntiendung@gmail.com Eui-Nam Huh * Department of Computer Engineering Kyung Hee University Yongin, South Korea johnhuh@khu.ac.kr ABSTRACT Cloud Computing represents an attractive and cost-efficient of server-based computing and application service provider models. Together with Cloud computing development, we have witnessed the rapid increasing of mobile devices in- dustry. Smart-phone is now a well-functioning system of GPS navigation, 3G/4G mobile network, wifi technology and much more. By using Cloud Computing, traditional mobile applications often involve with many Cloud Services such as online data storage, collaboration, real-time mon- itoring, web, email, push messaging, database processing, compute processing and so on. As the extension of mo- bile applications, real-time location tracking and messaging system has become particularly important. In this paper, we present a cloud-based real-time location tracking and messaging system (CRLTMS), that consists a cloud-based push messaging service, namely Google Cloud Messaging (GCM), web server, database and GPS navigation data. An Android-based child-care application case study shows that the effectiveness of the system, which enables the server tracks and communicates synchronously with smart-phones in real-time manner. Categories and Subject Descriptors [Networking/Telecommunications]: [Ubiquitous com- puting, Mobile computing, Mobile networks, Grid and cloud computing] * Eui-Nam Huh is the corresponding author. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. IMCOM 2015 Bali, Indonesia Copyright 20XX ACM X-XXXXX-XX-X/XX/XX ...$10.00. General Terms Application Keywords Real-time system, cloud computing, mobile cloud comput- ing, cloud messaging, cloud push service, Android, Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) 1. INTRODUCTION Recently, there has been a remarkable upsurge in Cloud Computing development, where computational processing, real-time monitoring, data sharing, storage, access and ma- nipulation can be achieved in cost-effective, secure, low up- front costs and pay-as-you-go models are considered as ad- vantages of clouds [8]. On the other hand, with the devel- opment of mobile technology and communication network, mobile internet has been gradually incorporated into peo- ple’s daily lives, transforms the Cloud internet services and empowers end users with rich mobile experience. By using mobile cloud computing (MCC), health-care ser- vices are being upgraded, achieve many good results and provide many services for human life. More particularly, in child-care service, we love nothing more than our children, we have to keep an eye on them and want to know that they are safe and doing well at any time. Technology has reduced the distance problem like never before, communica- tion technology has revolutionized the way we communicate today. With the advent of smart-phone, mobile application and cloud internet as well, we can have a powerful tool to track our kids on the move anytime and anywhere. Hence, the real-time application and system has attracted more at- tention to developers. To address this motivation, we de- velop a cloud-based real-time location tracking and messag- ing system (CRLTMS) and apply for child-care scenario. The CRLTMS, as illustrated Figure 1, is the combina- tion of child’s phone, which connected through internet to a monitoring server, Google cloud push service and by us- ing smart-phone, tablet or laptop, parents can watch their children’s move and communicate with them in real-time de-