Efficient delta synchronization algorithm in mobile cloud networks

In mobile cloud applications where the data is shared by multiple mobile users, it is essential to provide the consistency among mobile users by means of synchronization algorithms. In particular, if the data is frequently updated and the number of mobile users sharing the data is large, the synchronization traffic can be significant. In this paper, we propose an efficient delta synchronization (EDS) algorithm that aggregates the updated data to reduce the synchronization traffic and synchronizes the aggregated one periodically to satisfy the consistency. To find out an optimal policy for the aggregation and the periodical synchronization, an optimization problem is formulated as a Markov decision process (MDP) and a value iteration algorithm is presented for computing the stationary deterministic policy. Numerical results demonstrate that EDS can choose an optimal action that strikes a balance between the reduction of the synchronization traffic and the satisfaction of the consistency.