Software Networks

5Mobile Cloud Networking and Mobility Control

Mobile Cloud Networking (MCN) is a solution which has become very important in the context of mobile networks. The basic element is the mobile terminal, which moves around and requests services from a Cloud which, for its part, is fixed. Mobile Cloud also refers to technologies where the Cloud itself is mobile. It moves around with the client. The mobile Cloud may be virtual but also physical. We shall begin, in the first section, by examining MCN, and then in the second section we shall look at mobile Clouds, before concluding this chapter with a discussion of the means of control of mobility of the terminals and users.

5.1. Mobile Cloud Networking

The exact definition of “Mobile Cloud Networking” is very controversial, because there is no real definition and no clear architecture. There are two predominant orientations in the field of MCN:

• – an application orientation, which means that a mobile device with limited resources is able to handle applications which require intensive computations or more memory than the terminal has;
• – a network orientation, which involves the optimization of algorithms for the control of mobile services.

In the context of application orientation, we can cite various applications which correspond to this framework, such as Rich Mobile applications, “Mobile Cloud gaming” or indeed MGaaS (Mobile Game as a Service), augmented reality or mobile applications involving intensive computations such as OCR (Optical ...