Task allocation for mobile cloud computing: State-of-the-art and open challenges

For the last decade, researchers are showing interest in mobile cloud computing (MCC) for its promising potentiality. It combines cloud computing and mobile computing providing better quality of service to user with mobile device. Resource famished applications can now be executed on mobile devices by offloading the task on cloud. Major research areas in MCC are how, where and when to offload a task from mobile devices to cloud. Servers have to be selected very carefully to offload a task to ensure users' enhanced quality of experience which becomes more complex due to different limitations of wireless networks (i.e., network inconsistency, collision, etc.). In this paper, the existing mechanisms for task allocation are discussed in detail and a comparison among these is provided based on criteria such as execution location, users' mobility, server load, etc. Finally, open research challenges are identified to help the researchers to find the new research directions in this field.