PATTERN-BASED AND REUSE-DRIVEN ARCHITECTING OF MOBILE CLOUD SOFTWARE

Context: Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) represents the state-of-the-art technology that unifies mobile computing and cloud computing to develop systems that are portable yet resource sufficient. Mobile computing allows portable communication and context-aware computation, however, due to the energy and resource constraints mobile computing lacks performance for computationally intensive tasks. Cloud computing model uses the ‘as a service’ model - providing hardware and software services - to offer virtually unlimited storage and processing resources. The integration of mobile and cloud computing has given rise to the MCC systems that are portable, context-aware and resource sufficient. Challenges and Solution: To develop the MCC systems, some recurring challenges such as connectivity, context-awareness, portability and security must be addressed during the system design and architecting process. One way to address these challenges is to use the best practices and repeatable solutions to design and architect the MCC systems. In this research, we aim to utilise the empirically discovered patterns that support reusable design knowledge for architecture-driven development of the MCC systems. We follow a three-step process to empirically discover, document and apply patterns for architecting mobile cloud systems. Specifically, we have discovered three patterns as generic and reusable solutions for MCC systems. We demonstrate the applicability of the patterns based on a case study for architecture-centric development of the MCC patterns. The propose research aims to advance the state-of-the-art on reusable and knowledge-driven architecting of the MCC systems.