Reliable resource allocation and fault tolerance in mobile cloud computing

By switching the computational load from mobile devices to the cloud, Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) allows mobile devices to offer a wider range of functionalities. There are several issues in using mobile devices as resource providers, including unstable wireless connections, limited energy capacity, and frequent location changes. Fault tolerance and reliable resource allocation are among the challenges encountered by mobile service providers in MCC. In this paper, a new reliable resource allocation and fault tolerance mechanism is proposed in order to apply a fully distributed resource allocation algorithm without exploiting any central component. The objective is to improve the reliability of mobile resources. The proposed approach involves two steps: (۱) Predicting device status by gathering contextual information and applying TOPSIS to prevent faults caused by volatility of mobile devices, and (۲) Adapting replication and checkpointing methods to fault tolerance. A context-aware reliable offloading middleware is developed to collect contextual information and manage the offloading process. To evaluate the proposed method, several experiments are run in a real environment. The results indicate improvements in success rates, completion time, and energy consumption for tasks with high computational loads.