Mobile Healthcare Computing in the Cloud

Previous medical services for humans provided healthcare information using the static-based computing of space-constrained hospitals or healthcare centers. In contrast, current mobile health information management computing and services are being provided so that they utilize both the mobility of mobile computing and the scalability of cloud computing to monitor in real-time the health status of patients who are moving. In addition, data capacity has sharply increased with the expansion of the principal data generation cycle from the traditional static computing environment to the dynamic computing environment. This chapter presents mobile cloud healthcare computing systems that simultaneously leverage the portability and scalability of healthcare services. This chapter also presents the wearable computing system as an application of mobile healthcare.

Vehicular Cloud Computing

Recently, Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANET) have attracted the attention of research communities, leading car manufacturers, and governments due to their potential applications and specific characteristics. Their research outcome was started with awareness between vehicles for collision avoidance and Internet access and then expanded to vehicular multimedia communications. Moreover, vehicles’ high computation, communication, and storage resources set a ground for vehicular networks to deploy these applications in the near future. Nevertheless, on-board resources in vehicles are mostly underutilized. Vehicular Cloud Computing (VCC) is developed to utilize the VANET resources efficiently and provide subscribers safe infotainment services. In this chapter, the authors perform a survey of state-of-the-art vehicular cloud computing as well as the existing techniques that utilize cloud computing for performance improvements in VANET. The authors then classify the VCC based on the applications, service types, and vehicular cloud organization. They present the detail for each VCC application and formation. Lastly, the authors discuss the open issues and research directions related to VANET cloud computing.

QoS in the Mobile Cloud Computing Environment

Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) integrates cloud computing into the mobile environment and overcomes obstacles related to performance (e.g., bandwidth, throughput) and environment (e.g., heterogeneity, scalability, and availability). Quality of Service (QoS), such as end-to-end delay, packet loss ratio, etc., is vital for MCC applications. In this chapter, several important approaches for performance evaluation in MCC are introduced. These approaches, such as Markov Processes, Scheduling, and Game Theory, are the most popular methodologies in current research about performance evaluation in MCC. QoS is special in MCC compared to other environments. Important QoS problems with details in MCC and corresponding designs and solutions are explained. This chapter covers the most important research problems and current status related to performance evaluation and QoS in MCC.

Mobile Video Cloud Networks

Mobile multimedia computing has become ubiquitous in everyday life. However, mobile device users involved in resource-demanding visual applications such as video streaming often encounter performance degradations due to their mobile devices’ intrinsic constraints in processing power, storage, and battery capacity. Cloud computing can be explored to circumvent such problems thanks to the vast resources available in the cloud. Mobile video cloud computing has thus emerged as an important research and development topic to achieve high-performance, innovative networked video applications. This chapter discusses the recent advances in mobile video cloud technologies and applications. The authors investigate mobile video cloud systems starting with the various mobile cloud paradigms and then present challenges and solutions of mobile video cloud management for mobility, context, and security. Furthermore, the authors examine the latest video coding standards and explore methods based on parallelisation and scalability for their optimised application over mobile clouds, followed by three highlighted mobile cloud video applications including streaming, transcoding, and gaming. Finally, future directions in this area are envisioned.

Transporting the Cloud

Cloud computing is consistently proving to be the dominant architecture of the future, and mobile technology is the catalyst. By having the processing power and storage remotely accessible, the main focus of the terminal is now related to connectivity and user-interface. The success of cloud-based applications greatly depends on the throughput experienced by the end user, which is why transport protocols play a key role in mobile cloud computing. This chapter discusses the main issues encountered in cloud networks that affect connection-oriented transport protocols. These issues include, but are not limited to, large delay connections, bandwidth variations, power consumption, and high segment loss rates. To reduce these adverse effects, a set of proposed solutions are presented; furthermore, the advantages and disadvantages are discussed. Finally, suggestions are made for future mobile cloud computing transport-layer designs that address different aspects of the network, such as transparency, congestion-intensity estimation, and quality-of-service integration.

Application of Mobile Cloud-Based Technologies in News Reporting

Cloud Computing is one of the most rapidly evolving technologies available today that offers the possibility of multimedia content exploitation with rich media experience. Cloud computing users have the flexibility to enjoy media content independently of time and space. Multimedia cloud computing encompasses technology, multimedia data, and community contribution, offering augmented multimodal interaction and advanced processing services to the users. Mobile multimedia resources can now be accessed through the cloud practically at anytime and from anywhere, facing contemporary demands for information access and process, thus perfectly matching to the nature of news media. Such features are very favorable in online journalism and specifically in news reporting services. This chapter presents technological and application-oriented trends in cloud-based mobile news reporting both at journalists’ (news producers) and users’ (news consumers) sides. Future and emerging perspectives, such as ubiquitous and pervasive computing, incorporating context and location-aware services in semantic interaction modes, are also described from the news-reporting point of view.

A Proposal for Multidisciplinary Software for People with Autism

This chapter is about the study of treatments for autistic children and interventions of entertainment games with the purpose of developing a technological solution in order to promote a better adaptation between the autistic children and treatment, consequently showing better results in a shorter period of time. The multidisciplinary software for Autism treatment is being developed. It is based on PECs, ABA, and TEACCH methods, and it uses ludic games and activity interventions. Before applying technology to autism treatment, a deep study about autistic children is made. This way, concepts such as customization and the use of Kinect, Mobile (WP7), and Cloud Computer technologies take part as a stimulator system, since they are responsible for intensifying cognitive development and reducing the patient’s excitement, aggressiveness, and irritability.

Cloud-Based Service Delivery Architecture with Service-Populating and Mobility-Aware Mechanisms

Advances in Mobile and Cloud technologies have redefined the way we perceive and use computers. Mobile devices now rely on Cloud technology for storage and applications. Furthermore, recent advances in network technology ensure that mobile devices in the future will have high-bandwidth connectivity at all times. This drives the incentive of doing all the processing and storage in the Cloud and using mobile devices to access the services. In this chapter, the authors argue that always-on connectivity along with increased demand of Cloud services will contest the Internet backbone and create problems in the management of Cloud resources. Client mobility is also a factor that should be taken into account when providing Cloud services to mobile devices. The authors therefore propose a new service delivery architecture that takes into account client mobility as well as the distance between clients and services in order to manage Cloud and network resources more efficiently and provide a better Quality of Experience for the user.

Privacy and Security of Wireless Communication Networks

Wireless networks are inherently more vulnerable than their wired counterparts. In addition, complications arise in the presence of node mobility and dynamic network topology. Moreover, intermittent connectivity, whether caused by mobility or periodic node sleep, brings about additional challenges. At the same time, node resource constraints make direct adoption of existing security solutions difficult, if not impossible. Wireless Communication Network Security and Privacy analyze important problems in the realms of wireless networks and mobile computing. The Security aspects relate to authentication, access control and authorization, nonrepudation, privacy and confidentiality, integrity, and auditing. Privacy is an essential feature of any product or service.

Addressing Fundamental Challenges in Mobile Cloud Computing with 4G LTE-Advanced

Today, mobile tools, such as smartphones and tablets, have become primary computing devices for many users. One mobile tool to satisfy this is the 4G network technology LTE (Long-Term Evolution)-Advanced. These mobile tools are resource-poor due to limited battery life. Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) is intended to provide services to mobile users by supplementing the resource-paucity of mobile devices (i.e. off-loading tasks/data on the Internet and providing the resources to a local client on-demand). However, despite LTE-Advanced’s improved network quality, much needs to be done before MCC can reach its true potential. This chapter characterizes key challenges for deployment of MCC with 4G: device battery lifetime, latency, quality of service/experience, and handover. Statistical modeling is a powerful tool to address these issues. Once MCC with 4G network behavior is characterized, it is translated into the future development of innovative mobile technologies for a wide variety of new applications.