Impact of cloudlets on interactive mobile cloud applications

In this paper we analyze and study the impact of cloudlets in interactive mobile cloud applications. To study the impact we propose the design of cloudlet network and service architectures. Our study focuses on file editing, video streaming and collaborative chatting which are representative enterprise application scenarios. Initial simulation results show the performance gains of using cloudlets over using clouds in terms of data transfer delay and system throughput. When not more than two cloudlet wireless hops are used to transfer data, the cloudlet-based approach outperforms the cloud-based approach for all three application scenarios. With more cloudlet wireless hops under mobility, the cloud-based approach can give a better performance for some of the data transfers even though the cloudlet-based can outperform the cloud-based approach for most of the flows. In such scenarios, we suggest that an adaptive scheme should be used. For example, a scheme making an intelligent decision on either the cloudlet network or the cloud network, whichever gives minimum delay, can be used.