ZTE

ZTE Communications ›› 2011, Vol. 9 ›› Issue (1): 15-21.

• Special Topic • Previous Articles     Next Articles

A Cloud-Based Virtualized Execution Environment for Mobile Applications

Shih-Hao Hung, Tei-Wei Kuo, Chi-Sheng Shih, Jeng-Peng Shieh, Chen-Pang Lee, Che-Wei Chang, and Jie-Wen Wei   

  1. Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Taiwan University
  • Online:2011-03-25 Published:2011-03-25
  • About author:Shih-Hao Hung (hungsh@csie.ntu.edu.tw) joined the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering at National Taiwan University as assistant professor in 2005. His research interests include cloud computing, parallel processing, embedded systems, and pervasive applications. He worked for the Performance and Availability Engineering group at Sun Microsystem Inc. in Menlo Park, California (2000-2005) after completing post doctoral work (1998-2000), Ph.D. (1994-1998) and M.S. (1992-1994) at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He graduated from National Taiwan University with a BS degree in electrical engineering in 1989.

    Tei-Wei Kuo (ktw@csie.ntu.edu.tw) is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Taiwan University. He was the chairman of his department (2005-2008) and deputy dean of his college (2006-2008). Prof. Kuo is an IEEE Fellow. He is on the editorial board of IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics. He was the program chair and general chair of the IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium in 2007 and 2008. He has published over 180 journal and conference papers.

    Chi-Sheng Shih (cshih@csie.ntu.edu.tw) has been an associate professor at the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering at National Taiwan University since 2008. In 2003, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research interests include real-time operating systems, real-time scheduling theory, embedded software, and software/hardware co-design for system-on-a-chip. He received the Best Student Paper Award from the IEEE Real-Time System Symposium in 2004 and Best Paper Award from the IEEE International Conference on Embedded and Real-Time Computing Systems and Applications in 2005.

    Jeng-Peng Shieh (d97026@csie.ntu.edu.tw) received his B.S.E.E. and M.EMBA degrees from the National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan, in 1986 and 2007. He has been a Ph.D. student in Computer Science and Information Engineering of National Taiwan University since 2008. He was a system engineer at BDC Co., Hsinchu, Taiwan (1988-1991), a senior and chief system engineer at RPTI, Taipei (1991-1996), founder of a software house for designing Internet e-commerce system (1996-2002), the head of R&D department of PROTON Inc., Taiwan, (2003-2009). His research interests include linux-based mobile system design, power and performance optimization, system virtualization, and migration scheme leveraging clustering/cloud computing.

    Chen-Pang Lee (d97039@csie.ntu.edu.tw) was born in Taipei, Taiwan. He received a B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Fu Jen Catholic University in 1996, and an M.S. degree in control engineering from National Taiwan University of Science and Technology in 1998. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in information engineering in National Taiwan University. His research interests include wireless sensor networks and storage systems, especially for data synchronization and security.

    Che-Wei Chang (f95093@csie.ntu.edu.tw) received a B.S. degree in Computer Science from National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan, in 2006. He is currently working towards a Ph.D. in computer science and information engineering from National Taiwan University, supervised by Prof. Tei-Wei Kuo. His current research interests include energy-efficient scheduling, fast-booting designs, and multicore management.

    Jei-Wen Wei (r98922062@csie.ntu.edu.tw) received a B.S. degree from National Chung-Cheng University in 2009. In 2009, she joined the Embedded Systems and Wireless Networking Laboratory under the supervision of Prof. Chi-Sheng Shih, in the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Taiwan University. Her research interests include embedded system design, real-time scheduling, and multiprocessor optimization. She is the project manager of the System Software Designs for Heterogeneous Embedded Multicore Processors project.
  • Supported by:
    This work was supported in part by a grant from the National Science Council under No. 98-2220-E-002-020, 99-2220-E-002-026, and 95-2221-E-002-098-MY3.

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Abstract: Smartphones and cloud computing technologies have enabled the development of sophisticated mobile applications. Still, many of these applications do not perform well due to limited computation, data storage, network bandwidth, and battery capacity in a mobile phone. While applications can be redesigned with client-server models to benefit from cloud services, users are no longer in full control of the application. This is also a serious concern. We propose an innovative framework for executing mobile applications in a virtualized cloud environment. With encryption and isolation, this environment is controlled by the user and protected against eavesdropping from cloud providers. We have developed efficient schemes for migrating applications and synchronizing data between execution environments. Performance and power issues within a virtualized execution environment are also addressed using power saving and scheduling techniques that enable automatic, seamless application migration.

Key words: smartphone, cloud computing, mobile network, virtualization, collaborative computing, energy-saving, scheduling