MAP: a cloud-based middleware for the provision of fine-grained compute services for mobile streaming image processing applications

Abstract

Infrastructure-as-a-service offerings and the continuous evolution of wireless network technologies facilitate the integration of remote services into mobile applications. In contrast to cloud data stores, the mobile usage of cloud-based compute services is still underdeveloped. Platform-as-a-service offerings are not flexible enough to serve mobile requirements, which are performance predictability and performance adjustability based on the current connection quality. Infrastructure services are too expensive for single users, because they are normally billed at an hourly basis while the usage period is on the basis of minutes or seconds. To overcome the issues named, we propose a middleware that offers fine-grained configurable compute services for mobile users. To select a proper compute service quality according to the current needs, the remote execution performance is estimated based on the current network performance, application characteristics, and the current input data. Cloud options reflect the estimated performance for different resource types. A user may choose a cloud option for remote processing on demand. In a case study, we demonstrate the steps that are necessary to set up an application on our middleware. Furthermore, we investigate the estimation quality for a mobile image processing application.