AUTONOMIC SERVICE MANAGEMENT IN MOBILE CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURES

With the introduction and advancement of mobile cloud computing, endless opportunities for the provision of mobile phone services have ensued. Mobile cloud computing technology has brought about a breakthrough in information management by enabling the use of central servers which act as hosts, to deliver the required services, providing flexibility and reliability to mobile users. Due to the dynamic nature of mobile devices, and various constraints such as limited bandwidth however, the use of a traditional central server for these devices continues to prove problematic, with a number of issues including congestion and server failure occurring time and time again, while the demand for mobile cloud services continue to rise. This research project seeks to address these problems by presenting an alternate approach for service management in mobile cloud infrastructures. This research presents a decentralised model that takes inspiration from the flocking behaviour of birds since birds are known to interact locally to produce a global behaviour without a central point of authority. Three variations of the proposed model were developed to support how mobile devices interact for service provision. As an exemplar case study, a simulation of mobile users participating in the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics where multimedia contents are provided and consumed as services was performed. Additionally, experiments were conducted to evaluate the three variations of the models based on their performance on the set out aim. The results from the experiments indicate that the proposed mechanism was quite practicable since the mobile devices are able to select and provide services in a decentralised manner. The research has shown that mobile devices can be configured to provide their services in a decentralised manner while considering social issues.