Geo-location-aware emulations for performance evaluation of mobile applications

This paper presents the design of a simple emulation framework for performance evaluation and testing of mobile applications. Our testbed combines production hardware and software to allow emulation of realistic and repeatable mobility scenarios, in which the mobile user can travel long distances, while being served by an application server. The framework allows (i) geo-location information, (ii) client network conditions such as bandwidth and loss rate, as well as (iii) the application workload to be emulated synchronously. To illustrate the power of the framework we also present the design, proof-of-concept implementation, and evaluation of a geo-smart scheduler for application updates in smartphones. This geo-smart scheduler reduces the average download time by using a network performance map to schedule the downloads when at places with relatively good conditions. Our trace-driven evaluation of the geo-smart scheduler, illustrates the workings of the emulation framework, and the potential of the geo-smart scheduler.