iScreen: A Merged Screen of Local System with Remote Applications in a Mobile Cloud Environment

With the convergence of cloud computing and mobile computing, mobile devices can access remote applications in a cloud environment. However, existing research work mostly focused on leveraging cloud capabilities to enhance mobile clients. Particularly, in order to access different cloud platforms and applications, specific version of clients such as Web portal, Remote Desktop, are generally required. The original display and interaction experience on the client local system are changed. This paper presents an approach named screen which keeps a consistent display and interaction experience between local and remote applications in a mobile cloud computing environment. screen consists of a three-factor merging framework including windows merging, meta-info merging and interaction merging for applications. We developed a prototype of screen for Windows applications to allow thin clients to seamlessly access remote cloud windows applications. Experimental studies show that screen can effectively merge local desktop with remote display, and mobile clients can achieve 20 frames per second when running a remote video playback application. The bandwidth usage of screen is reduced by about 10% compared to Ultra VNC. It performs better especially under high-motion scenarios.