A systematic literature review of mobile cloud computing

Mobile cloud computing (MCC) is a relatively new concept that leverages the combination of cloud technology, mobile computing, and wireless networking to enrich the usability experiences of mobile users. Many field of application such as mobile health, mobile learning, mobile commerce and mobile entertainment are now taking advantage of MCC technologies. Since MCC is new, there is need to advance research in MCC in order to deepen practice. Currently, what exist are mostly descriptive literature reviews in the area of MCC. In this paper, a systematic literature review (SLR), which offers a structured, methodical, and rigorous approach to the understanding of the trend of research in MCC, and the least and most researched issue is presented. The objective of the study is to provide a credible intellectual guide for upcoming researchers in MCC to help them identify areas in MCC research where they can make the most impact. The SLR was limited to peer-reviewed conference papers and journal articles published from 2002 to 2014. The study reveals that privacy, security and trust in MCC are the least researched, whereas issues of architecture, context awareness and data management have been averagely researched, while issues on operations, end users, service and applications have received a lot of attention in the literature. © 2015 SERSC.