Mobile Computation Offloading: a Context-driven Approach

Mobile computation offloading means transfer of execution of mobile software computation outside of the actual device. In this paper, we use a context-driven approach to analyse and design offloading systems. We conduct a literature survey of the types of offloading, supportive architectural models and existing frameworks to propose taxonomies of mobile offloading from viewpoints of an overall computation system and mobile software architecture. Moreover, we propose offloading into a local network, calling this local context offloading. The idea is to minimise network distance to maintain lower latency and higher bitrates, which have an effect to the power consumption in data communications. In addition, our proposal attempts to overcome challenges of scarce Internet connectivity and make good use of collaboration with nearby devices. The main focus remains on the context-awareness. This paper is a step towards a framework that will hide the underlying technology in such dynamic computation environment.