Page 30 - ITU Journal Future and evolving technologies – Volume 2 (2021), Issue 2

ITU Journal on Future and Evolving Technologies, Volume 2 (2021), Issue 2

overcoming constraints associated with limited sources MCC when considering intensive computational so‑
of energy. These challenges can be classi ied in two cate‑ lutions to achieve seamless service provision. Devel‑
gories, MCC infrastructural challenges and mobile devices opers and operators deployed applications and sys‑
related constrains. tems with the goal to conserve mobile battery power;
however, resource and data intensive tasks of loaded
• Network Bandwidth: Adequate network bandwidth from the mobile device to the cloud require more en‑
is essential for achieving seamless communication ergy. Estimating energy ef iciency of computation of‑
in the MCC environment. Unfortunately, in the MCC loading is complex because of the heterogeneity of
environment, some wireless networks provide low wireless technologies and infrastructures.
bandwidth, intermittent signal availability or less re‑
liable transmission, which cause critical issues re‑
sulting in quality of service degradation, additional • Mobility Management: In the MCC environment, the
latency and hangs in applications. ability of mobile devices to move around constitutes
an obstacle for achieving seamless connectivity to
• Network Availability: To achieve seamless commu‑
the cloud. Most of the time, intermittent connec‑
nication in an MCC environment, one should assure
tivity, unreliable services, degradation of quality of
that there is a continuous Internet connectivity and service, and disruption are caused by user equip‑
exchange of data between the mobile device and the ment mobility. The solutions to this problem in‑
cloud. Unfortunately, network coverage is nonexis‑ volve handover between service areas or base sta‑
tent in some areas due to a lack of infrastructure, or tions and location prediction as the device moves
interference with other signal blockers. This causes around, to route the data to the intended destina‑
major delays and applications’ hangs since most of tion and re‑synchronization of service provision if
mobile applications need to be always linked to the for some reason the device is disconnected from the
cloud from any place to function properly. network. However, handover also comes with other

• Heterogeneity Management: Heterogeneity is de‑ challenges such as handover failure and handover la‑
ined as the existence of various types of mobile de‑ tency, which become important issues when deal‑
vices, clouds and wireless networks with different ing with wireless heterogeneity and intensive traf‑
hardware, architectures, infrastructure, and tech‑ ic applications in MCC; these issues depend as well
nologies. Available edge technologies expected to on choosing the right network based on application
initiate and facilitate collaboration of heterogeneous requirement, user preferences, services offered and
computing devices toward unrestricted mobile com‑ environment. Also, most handover techniques are
puting are unfortunately limited, thus making het‑ de ined in IP layers, which makes it challenging to
erogeneity in the MCC environment challenging for properly de ine the role of each layer handover for
achieving seamless communication in MCC as varia‑ achieving low latency.
tions of network and its related technologies affect
the delivery of cloud services. • Security and Privacy: Protection of users’ data re‑
mains one of the greatest concerns in MCC. Most
• Latency Reduction: Reducing latency in MCC net‑
works is critical for achieving seamless service pro‑ mobile devices store users’ con idential informa‑
vision, latency constitutes a signi icant barrier that tion such as medical records, banking information,
limits the solutions proposed in MCC and it is not a location and other personal information, which is
new problem in MCC. Several different types of so‑ shared with cloud infrastructures as some applica‑
lutions are proposed by scholars to reduce latency tions use it to provide appropriate services. Stor‑
in MCC but it remains one of the major challenges in ing private information in the cloud environment
the area. The latency of a system in MCC is propor‑ and accessing it through Internet services and wire‑
tional to the processing time of computational oper‑ less networks make it vulnerable to numerous cyber‑
ations, the downloading and of loading time and the attackers. Identity provisioning and access manage‑
rate at which operations are performed in the sys‑ ment through different environments are a sample
tem. Long WANs are one of the causes of latency of the security keys, which manifest the necessity
in MCC, of loading mobile intensive applications to of secure intercommunication in MCC [55]. Thus,
distant cloud resources, for instance, creates a bot‑ cloud service providers need to increase security
tleneck in the network. To reduce interaction la‑ by providing strong authentication and authoriza‑
tency, proposals such as Cloudlet, MOMCC, and SAMI tion methods. For instance, data migration or tasks
are proposed to create a proximate cloud to access of loading across multiple clouds should be highly
nearby remote resources, but further advancement secured as these communication processes involve
to achieve crisper response is required [55]. personally identi iable data. However, adding pro‑
tection such as data encryption to computational
• Energy Consumption: A limited amount of energy in tasks shared on the network increases processing
mobile devices is one of the issues encountered in overhead, which causes latency.

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