Optimal scheduling for data transmission between mobile devices and cloud

Mobile cloud computing has emerged as a new computing paradigm promising to extend the capabilities of resource-constrained mobile devices. In this new paradigm, mobile devices are enabled to offload computing tasks, report sensing records, and store large files on the cloud through wireless networks. Therefore, efficient data transmission has become an important issue affecting user experiences on mobile cloud. Considering the limited battery energy of mobile devices and different application requirements on transmission delay, this study presents an online control algorithm (OPERA) based on the Lyapunov optimization theory for optimally scheduling data transmission between mobile devices and cloud. The OPERA algorithm is able to make control decisions on application scheduling, interface selection and packet dropping to minimize a joint utility of network energy cost and packet dropping penalty, without requiring any statistical information of traffic arrivals and link throughputs. Rigorous analysis and extensive simulations have demonstrated its distinguished performance in terms of utility optimality, system stability and service delay. (c) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.