A novel application model and an offloading mechanism for efficient mobile computing

This paper presents a new application model and a novel execution path-based algorithm for offloading in Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) environments. Application offloading is the mechanism by which parts or modules of the application are executed in cloud remote computational services. Such operation saves resources in the mobile device but also incurs costs of accessing the cloud and using the communication network connecting the mobile device and cloud. The offloading problem is to find an offloading decision that minimizes the total cost of executing the application. Previous solutions find a single offloading decision per module. However, the total cost of executing a module also depends on the sequence of module calls leading to its execution. We present a fine grained application model and a fast optimal offloading decision algorithm where multiple offloading decisions are made per module based on the execution paths leading to the module. We evaluate our solution for a face detection mobile applications in multiple network scenarios. We show that our model and algorithm offer offloading decisions that are significant faster than offloading decision by traditional offloading schemes.