Operator centric mobile cloud architecture

Researchers agree on a basic, general and abstract definition that mobile cloud computing is a combination of mobile and cloud computing. Nevertheless, the location of the computation power is still controversial and varies from centralized servers located somewhere in the internet to a collection of mobile devices interested in processing certain tasks. Interestingly, all mobile cloud architectures tried to meet the expectations of mobile cloud through application layer solutions. Although of its innovation, mobile networks´ physical layer is not optimized for similar applications, thus it affects the system´s overall performance and cause mobile cloud architectures to fail in satisfying its goals such as increase in delay, increase in battery consumption etc. In this paper, we will discuss mobile cloud from telecommunication perspective to harmonize the physical layer of mobile networks (LTE and UMTS) with the application layer by proposing an innovative architecture. This new architecture keeps the mobile operator at the core of mobile cloud computing and offers revenue-making business model that motivates the operator to invest in this technology.