Sino-European collaboration in cloud computing
There are many benefits for users of cloud computing, where mobile devices perform tasks or access data on the cloud. The increased power of such devices, however, may come at a cost in terms of energy consumption. Against this backdrop, the EU-funded MOBILECLOUD (Linking Sino-European research institutions in the mobile cloud computing era) project investigated how mobile cloud computing services can be more efficient and in an energy-efficient manner. To achieve its aims, the project established an exchange platform for researchers and ideas related to the topic, bringing together eight universities and research institutions from China and Europe. The team worked jointly on building a global multidisciplinary environment for cloud and mobile computing, telecommunications, network optimisation and computer systems. This was done with the aim of developing new ways to streamline mobile cloud computing resources and meet the demand for energy efficiency. Significant headway was made in this respect, with the team having published 57 papers in international journals and 82 papers in international conferences. Dissemination also included 124 public presentations at host institutions, 4 China-European workshops on Mobile Cloud Computing from 2014 to 2016, and participation in several relevant events worldwide. The project’s publications were instrumental in helping to advance the sector. Topics written about include a novel embedding method for information dissemination prediction in big social networks, optimising cost for online social networks on geo-distributed clouds, and an energy-efficient, incentive-aware task offloading framework. Other relevant subjects researched addressed mechanisms and challenges on mobility-augmented service provisioning for mobile cloud computing and data routing strategies in opportunistic mobile social networks. These outcomes helped instigate new projects on energy efficiency in cloud computing, in addition to building joint Sino-European education and research. The long-term benefit of research conducted under MOBILECLOUD is bound to be a better user experience in mobile cloud computing.
Keywords
Mobile cloud computing, energy-efficient, MOBILECLOUD, social networks, geo-distributed clouds
