Mobile Clouds: Exploiting Distributed Resources in Wireless, Mobile and Social Networks

Preface

Putting Mobile Clouds into Context

Wireless and mobile communications have rapidly evolved, offering today high–speed connectivity and advanced services to a continuously rising number of subscribers on the move. Currently, there are well above seven billion mobile subscribers worldwide and ITU predicts that penetration figures will exceed 100% in 2014. Since the turn of this century the developments in wireless and mobile communication systems became faster, particularly in access networks, mobile devices and service technologies. The principal design goals of mobile networks have been to increase data throughput and energy efficiency. These goals have well been achieved by cellular networks through several technology generations.

Current cellular networks can establish data connections at rates that were unthinkable a decade ago, and in many cases the speeds are comparable to what is today offered by wired networks. Two present trends in communications are creating new demands and challenges to current mobile and wireless communications technology. These are the current rapid development of social networking as well as the emergence of Machine–to–Machine (M2M) and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies.

The patterns of how people communicate and socialize have changed and continue evolving, mostly inspired and supported by the Internet. Ubiquitous connectivity is now a reality, people can be connected to each other, access information and distribute their own content ...