Help your mobile applications with fog computing

Cloud computing has paved a way for resource-constrained mobile devices to speed up their computing tasks and to expand their storage capacity. However, cloud computing is not necessary a panacea for all mobile applications. The high network latency to cloud data centers may not be ideal for delay-sensitive applications while storing everything on public clouds risks users' security and privacy. In this paper, we discuss two preliminary ideas, one for mobile application offloading and the other for mobile storage expansion, by leveraging the edge intelligence offered by fog computing to help mobile applications. Preliminary experiments conducted based on implemented prototypes show that fog computing can provide an effective and sometimes better alternative to help mobile applications.