Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory 50 (2015) 96108

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/simpat

Mobile storage augmentation in mobile cloud computing:

Taxonomy, approaches, and open issues
Nazanin Aminzadeh , Zohreh Sanaei, Siti Hazah Ab Hamid
Faculty of Computer Science and IT, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Available online 15 June 2014
Keywords:
Mobile cloud computing
Cloud computing
Big data
Mobile data
Mobile data storage
Taxonomy

a b s t r a c t
Worldwide employment of mobile devices in various critical domains, particularly
healthcare, disaster recovery, and education has revolutionized data generation rate. However, rapidly rising data volume intensies data storage and battery limitations of mobile
devices. Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) as the state-of-the-art mobile computing aims to
augment mobile storage by leveraging innite cloud resources to provide unlimited
storage capabilities with energy-dissipation prevention. Researchers have already
surveyed varied MCC aspects and its challenges, but successful futuristic Mobile Storage
Augmentation (MSA) approaches demand deep insight into the current storage augmentation solutions that highlights critical challenges, which are lacking. This paper thoroughly
investigates the main MSA issues in three domains of mobile computing, cloud computing,
and MCC to present a taxonomy. Also, it examines several credible MSA approaches and
mechanisms in MCC, classies characteristics of cloud-based storage resources, and
presents open issues that direct future research.
2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Mobile data volume has been increased drastically in recent years. Analysys Masons report [1] forecasts 6.3 times growth
of mobile data volume trafc amid 2013 and 2018. One reason, among the bevy of inducements is the exploitation of mobile
devices in various critical domains of healthcare [2], disaster recovery [3], and education [4]. The voluminous and rapidly
generated data in various modalities, which is known as big data [5], demands high capacity, exible, and reliable storage
infrastructure.
However, mobile devices are characterized by storage constraints, limited processing, and a short span battery. Storage
limitation and energy consumption are critical factors for resource constrained non-stationary computing devices, especially
smartphones. High performance and energy-efcient data storage ensures the battery lifes augmentation. Despite advancements for augmenting a mobile devices storage including employment of ash and Secure Digital (SD) cards, current rich
mobile applications [6] demand higher storage capacity. Reducing the effects of mobile devices deciencies and unreliable
wireless connections in comparison with wired networks, are the ultimate goal in the plethora of efforts [7,8] and research to
realize end-users demand.
The emergence of the cloud as a rich resource with unlimited computing and storage capacities can be considered as a
good solution to mobile devices resource constraints. The use of a wireless medium, the ofoaded data, the dependency
Corresponding author. Tel.: +60 1125273423.
E-mail addresses: nazanin.aminzadeh@gmail.com (N. Aminzadeh), sanaei@ieee.org (Z. Sanaei), sitihazah@um.edu.my (S.H. Ab Hamid).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.simpat.2014.05.009
1569-190X/ 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

N. Aminzadeh et al. / Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory 50 (2015) 96108

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Table 1
List of acronym denitions.
Acronym

Description

ACID
DBMS
DSP
ESP
GPS
I/O
IaaS
ICN
iSCSI
LMH
MANET
MCC
MNO
MSA
PC
PDA
PP-CP-ABE

Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability

Data Base Management System
Decryption Service Provider
Encryption Service Provider
Global Positioning Systems
Input/Output
Infrastructure as a Service
Information Centric Network
Internet Small Computer System Interface
Large Mobile Host
Mobile Ad-hoc Network
Mobile Cloud Computing
Mobile Network Operators
Mobile Storage Augmentation
Personal Computer
Personal Digital Assistants
Privacy Preserving-Ciphtertext Policy-Attribute
Based Encryption
Storage as a Service
Storage Abstraction Layer
Secure Digital
Subscriber Identity Module
Service Level Agreement
Small Mobile Host
Service Oriented Architecture
Virtual Machine
Wide Area Network
Wireless Fidelity
Wireless Local Area Network

SaaS
SAL
SD
SIM
SLA
SMH
SOA
VM
WAN
Wi-Fi
WLAN

on a specic vendor, and data replication are among several challenges in this domain. Comprehensive studies [911] have
reviewed and tried to address challenges in this area. However, the latest endeavor is to deploy cloud resources to augment
computing [12] and storage [13] capabilities for a multitude of mobile devices which leads to the state-of-the-art MCC.
The MCC paradigm combines cloud computing, mobile computing, and networking [14] to enhance the performance and
capacity of mobile devices. It is characterized by inherited mobility and rich services from mobile and cloud computing
where a resource poverty (storage, computation, and battery) can impede the vision of time-, location-, and system type-free
ubiquitous computing [15].
In the previous works [1419], the MCC domain have been comprehensively investigated from various perspectives. In
[19], authors presented an extensive survey of heterogeneity in the MCC domain, presented an MCC denition, identied
major MCC challenges, devised its taxonomy, and highlighted several crucial open issues that help to identify future research
directions. Cloud-based augmentation [16] surveys the recent mobile augmentation efforts that employ cloud computing
infrastructures to enhance computing capabilities of resource-constraint mobile devices, especially smartphones. To the
extent of our knowledge, investigation of storage augmentation issues in the MCC domain is a nascent literature and requires
comprehensive study and analysis.
In this paper, we comprehensively analyze MSA issues in the context of mobile computing, cloud computing, and MCC
where each domains issues are investigated. Based on the investigated issues, we classify MSA issues into three classes
of mobile device, cloud-based and converged issues. Based on a review of prominent MSA approaches in MCC, we classify
cloud-based storage characteristics in a taxonomy that encompasses architecture, capacity, tiering, mobility, location, and
back-end connectivity. The paper highlights several open issues in MCC for MSA to pave the way for future efforts. Mobile
devices and smartphones are used interchangeably in this paper. Table 1 provides a list of acronyms used throughout the
paper.
The remainder of this paper is presented as follows. Section 2 presents the motivation for MSA in MCC based on a devised
taxonomy of issues. Section 3 reviews current approaches for MSA in MCC. Section 4 provides a taxonomy of cloud-based
storage characteristics in MCC. Open issues are highlighted in Sections 5 and 6 concludes the paper.
2. Motivation
Contemporary smartphones are dominant mobile devices that not only provide the basic telephony features of traditional
cellphones, but also incorporate the functionalities of several other digital devices, particularly Personal Digital Assistants
(PDA), Global Positioning Systems (GPS), sound recorders, and digital cameras [20] and are contributing to rapid digital data
generation rate by producing data les, including emails, spreadsheets, bank statements, and multimedia les (i.e., video,

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music, images, and any location related information) [21]. However, such rapid data generation by mobile devices named
mobile data demands extremely large elastic storage on mobile devices which is beyond their intrinsic capabilities. Mobile
devices are characterized by storage constraints, limited processing, and a short span battery. Hence, storage limitation and
energy consumption are critical factors for resource constrained non-stationary computing devices. Moreover, issues, particularly mobility, limited wireless throughput, and a small user interface are among real challenges that affect data availability
in mobile computing [16]. High performance energy-efcient storage ensures the battery life prolonging.
Despite the momentous role of mobile devices in various aspects of our daily life, resource poverty is a mobile devices
major deciency that impedes an end-users rich experience and demands. The incorporation of SD cards to expand storage
capacity in addition to the available built-in and on-SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) storage on smartphones as an instance
of mobile devices, cannot compete with end-users demand. To address poor storage capacity, a plethora of research has
focused on two varied hardware and software level approaches; shrinking big data volume and augmenting storage
capacities.
To shrink big data, researchers in [22,23] try to apply quantum theory to optimize the use of current storage by up to 80%.
Quantum data represent bits of data that use quantum bits or qubits to reduce the amount of bits used by each data in the
storage. Currently, a bit uses 12 atoms; however, in 2012, IBM [24] demonstrated feasibility of using only eight atoms to
store one bit data. Quantum theory can realize the possibility of dedicating only one atom to each bit to ensure a tremendous
reduction in storage utilization (up to 80%). However, the fully realization of this vision demands further extensive research.
Alternatively, storage augmentation approaches aim to alleviate storage shortcomings by leveraging lightweight methods.
The review of storage augmentation approaches in mobile devices, cloud resources, and MCC has led us to devise a
taxonomy of issues as depicted in Fig. 1. The taxonomy encompasses three main classes of mobile device, cloud-based,
and converged issues, which are described in more details as follows.
2.1. Mobile device issues
In the work [16], a taxonomy of augmentation motivation has been presented based on the intrinsic deciencies of mobile
devices. Storage augmentation approaches mainly facing issues pertaining to intrinsic and non-intrinsic deciencies of
mobile devices. Hence, the same taxonomy can be applied for the classication of storage augmentation issues. The processing power of mobile devices, energy resources, local storage, visualization capabilities, data safety, security, and privacy are
the vital issues that pose challenges and encumber efcient and effective mobile data storage.
Mobile devices are characterized by limited processing power, which implies restricted cache equipment. Restricted
cache imposes more I/O operation and increased energy consumption and processing time for data-intensive operations.
Data transmission in intermittent wireless networks is an energy-consuming task. Intermittency due to the unreliability
of a wireless link or a planned disconnection to save battery life are inevitable [25]. Therefore, data availability on mobile
devices becomes a signicant research direction. However, being nomadic, mobile devices cannot benet from the vast data
storage that is available to their immobile counterparts, which connes the amount of locally-stored data. Moreover, a
mobile DataBase Management Systems (DBMS) functionality is inuenced by the limited processing power and memory
of the host mobile devices. The size-constraint screens and the gracile keyboards of mobile devices as visualization limitations are other impediments in the design of storage augmentation approaches.
Researchers endeavor to address aforementioned issues by major MSA approaches including caching [26], hoarding, and
replication mechanisms [27] as well as broadcasting [28] and summarization [25] for mobile environment data.

Fig. 1. Taxonomy of MSA issues in MCC.

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99

2.2. Cloud-based issues

Storage augmentation issues are not merely peculiar to the mobile environment. Advancements in data storage technology from magnetic tapes and disks, optical/magneto-optical storage media, and ash memory to a storage area network,
network attached storage, and even storage virtualization approaches [29] cannot compete with the drastic growth of digital
data to terabytes and petabytes [9], which calls for additional data-intensive computing and management mechanisms.
The advent of the cloud as a rich computing resource [30] has provided virtually innite data storage to the industry and
individuals. The cloud as proposed in [30] is a type of parallel and distributed system consisting of a collection of interconnected and virtualized computers dynamically provisioned and presented as one or more unied computing resources based
on service-level agreements established through negotiation between the service provider and consumers. Cloud computing exploits cloud resources to provide ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of congurable
computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released
with minimal management effort or service provider interaction [31].
However, reliability, Service Level Agreement (SLA), performance, portability, security, and data condentiality [9] can be
considered major cloud-related storage augmentation issues. Reliability can be realized with redundancy, which may jeopardize guarantees for Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability (ACID) transactions. Active standardization to mitigate
a customers data extraction as an approach for the data lock-in and portability issue, the concurrent execution of an applications treads, optimized online scheduling [32] and the rich encryption as mechanisms for performance and security are
among some of the effective approaches for addressing the aforementioned issues [33].
2.3. Converged issues
The power of MCC originates from the convergence of mobile and cloud computing, which merges mobility, rich
resources, and functionality as renowned advantages of each domain [15]. Resource poverty processing power, storage
capacity, and battery power are inborn characteristics of mobile devices, and the consequent mobile device storage
augmentation issues can be alleviated by leveraging MCC. MCC is a rich mobile computing technology that leverages the
unied elastic resources of various clouds and network technologies toward an unrestricted functionality, storage, and
mobility to serve a multitude of mobile devices anywhere and anytime through the channel of the Ethernet or Internet
regardless of the heterogeneous environments and platforms based on the pay-as-you-use principle [19].
However, MCC is heterogeneous by nature because of inhomogeneous converged computing and networking technologies [19]. MCC heterogeneity is a consequence of diverse hardwares, operating systems, development languages, data
structures and network technologies. Although mobile computing is augmented through rich resources of the cloud, the
heterogeneity-based issues pose real challenges for storage amelioration in MCC. Data portability and interoperability,
energy efciency, long WAN latency, and data fragmentations are among the major issues of storage augmentation in
MCC as identied in our proposed taxonomy. Addressing mobile data storage issues in MCC has leaded to several MSA
approaches. In the next section, we critically review the state-of-the-art approaches.
3. Mobile-cloud storage augmentation approaches
In this section, we review credible efforts that aimed to address storage amelioration and the I/O performance of mobile
devices by leveraging cloud resources and lightweight methods. We analyze and synthesize the approaches from several
aspects, including mobility, energy efciency, latency, reliability, and architecture which are presented in Table 2.
Attribute-Based Data Storage (ABDS)
The ABDS system [34] is part of the security framework presented in [34]. The framework encompasses two prominent
components: namely, a privacy preserving CP-ABE (PP-CP-ABE) and an ABDS scheme. By leveraging PP-CP-ABE, the cloud
handles encryption and decryption tasks that entail an excessive load on resource-poor mobile devices. Two core parts,
the Encryption Service Provider (ESP) and the Decryption Service Provider (DSP), provide data condentiality and security
services without being aware of the encryption key and data contents. Similar to Phoenix [35], ABDS exploits the data
partitioning mechanism. However, ABDS differs from Phoenix by outsourcing the encryption and decryption tasks to
the public cloud. The ABDS scheme partitions data to a number of blocks and manages the encryption operations on
the required blocks independently. Consequently, when modifying a le on the cloud, the update and encryption tasks
are merely applied on specic blocks, which balance the storage and communication overhead through data storage
and retrieval.
Fig. 2 depicts ABDS framework. The data owner refers to the mobile nodes in the framework. The data owner accesses the
storage service provider services in a secure, energy-efcient, and optimized manner by utilizing outsourced services of
two prominent components (i.e., DSP and ESP).
Encryption through a data partitioning approach minimizes the data management and the cloud vendors charged costs.
However, encryption requires additional control information for data blocks, which imposes extra overhead for the data

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Mobility
Storage augmentation
Energy Efciency
Architecture
Tiering
WAN Latency
Data Blocking
Reliability
Availability
Security and Trust
Data Safety
Locality
I/O Performance
Back-end Connectivity
Communication Platform
Context Awareness
Client Networking

ABDS

SmartBox

WhereStore

Wukong

Phoenix

E-DRM

EECRS

MOMCC

UbiqStor

Immobile
High
Low
ClientServer
Single-tier
High
Low
High
High
High
High
Low
Varied
Wired
Internet
Low

Immobile
High
Low
ClientServer
Single-tier
High
Low
High
High
High
High
Low
Varied
Wired
Internet
Low

Immobile
High
Low
ClientServer
Single-tier
High
Low
High
High
High
High
Low
Varied
Wired
Internet
Low

Immobile
High
Low
ClientServer
Single-tier
High
Low
High
High
High
High
Low
Varied
Wired
Internet
Low

Mobile
Low
High
P2P
Single-tier
Low
High
Low
Low
Low
Low
High
Low
Wireless
Ethernet
High
Cellular/WLAN

Mobile
Low
High
P2P
Single-tier
Low
High
Low
Low
Low
Low
High
Low
Wireless
Ethernet
High

Mobile
Low
High
P2P
Single-tier
Low
High
Low
Low
Low
Low
High
Low
Wireless
Ethernet
High

Mobile
Low
High
P2P
Single-tier
Low
High
Low
Low
Low
Low
High
Low
Wireless
Ethernet
High

Immobile
Immobile
High
High
Medium
Medium
Hybrid
Hybrid
Multi-tier
Multi-tier
Hybrid
Hybrid
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Wired
Wired
Internet/Ethernet
Medium
Medium

SAMI

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Table 2
Comparison of cloud-based storage augmentation approaches.

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101

Fig. 2. ABDS framework.

management tasks. Moreover, the data block size should be identied optimally to satisfy the goal of minimizing data
management overhead tasks.
SmartBox
SmartBox [21] is a solution for mobile storage capacity expansion through cloud resources. It employs cloud space
referred to as shadow storage for storing and retrieving personal data by assigning a unique account for each mobile
device. SmartBox is a rich personal repository and provides a public space as common storage for sharing data among
associated mobile devices. Data access and navigation is provided via traditional hierarchical namespace and employs
an attribute-based method for semantic query, which uses publisher-provider metadata.
Nevertheless, the SmartBox design conforms to write once read many policy, which impedes its application as an enterprise solution. In addition, it requires a permanent connection to access data on the cloud, which is not feasible in many
cases.
WhereStore
A location-aware data storage approach is considered by WhereStore [36] to enhance smartphones I/O performance by
using cloud storage resources. The prediction and caching of adjacent place information through the replication of prominent data retrieved from the cloud is proposed in this solution to optimize data transfer time and to conserve energy.
Although several human mobility models and routing techniques [37] are proposed to gure out movement plan of
mobile users, predicting the users destination efciently and specifying the appropriate state and time for caching are
non-trivial tasks, which require further investigation.
Wukong
Wukong [13] is an additional I/O performance optimization and storage enlargement effort and is a cloud-based le service that provides user-friendly, transparent data access to inhomogeneous remote cloud storage services for mobile
devices. By leveraging the Storage Abstraction Layer (SAL) and plugin procedures, cloud data and services, namely Dropbox and Amazon S3 can be accessed transparently and remotely via mobile applications as if they are available locally.
Wukong realizes the provision of a uniform interface to access various cloud services simultaneously. The optimization
stack, cache management, and pre-fetch mechanisms are utilized to improve the throughput and minimize long WAN
latency. Moreover, the application of encryption and compression mechanisms enhances data security and communication, respectively, and completes the contribution of this approach.
However, limited wireless bandwidth and I/O operation costs are impediments that hinder Wukong in minimizing long
WAN latency. Moreover, the employment of efcient compression methods for multimedia les is required for the
success of this proposal. The proposed compression method is more benecial for minimizing a text les size. These

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objects encompass le types with a high ratio of compression. In addition, the prefetching method is more efcient in
sequential reading, which requires an improvement in random reading to enhance the performance of the work. However, in current prototype, dening large intervals among the open and read processes would save time during read
operations.
Phoenix
Phoenix [35] is a distributed communication and storage protocol that considers the power-aware storage sharing of
eager nearby mobile devices in the cloud for one-hop networks. Unlike E-DRM [38], which utilizes a periodic broadcast
of buffered data, Phoenix ensures data availability on participant mobile nodes by breaking each data content to a number
of blocks and copying them on at least two or more mobile devices. Phoenix provides edge nodes with a true number of
data blocks copied to maintain data availability and longevity in the self-organized cloud of mobile devices. Authors focus
on the extending the data survival time by minimizing disconnections, by administrating node movement, and by leaving
the support for the data update tasks to databases built on Phoenixs platform.
In addition, autonomous management and maintenance is realized by utilizing an advertising model. When a node
participates, it starts an asynchronous advertisement timer to decide whether to broadcast a block as a winner or to
become a follower contributor as a loser. The Phoenix performance is evaluated through testbed and simulation experiments. Simulation is performed via TOSSIM in TinyOS. The number of data block copies as well as the effect of nodes
failure and mobility are among the main factors examined in 100 simulations. The results show Phoenix support for data
availability because the number of available block copies is rarely less than the number of nodes in the network where
nodes are immobile. In the case of node mobility, it ensures data longevity by maintaining at least two copies of blocks in
the network. However, the current evaluation considers only one-hop networks. The simulation in multi-hop networks
[39] can improve Phoenixs applicability.
Phoenixs dependency on dening the number of participant nodes, the lack of authentication over a wireless network,
and the overhead imposed on the network, in addition to the security, data safety, and privacy issues are among the
challenging tasks that can hinder Phoenixs application in a real scenario.
Eager replication extended Database State Machine (E-DRM)
An E-DRM [38] is an energy-efcient replication approach for a Mobile Ad-hoc NETwork (MANET) [40]. A MANET encompasses a network of wireless mobile servers and clients. The nodes of a MANET are nomadic and have no permanent
access to electricity. Hence, MANETs are restricted from an energy source. Eager replication maintains data consistency
via the guarantee of an identical value for all copies on nodes. Unlike Phoenix [35] that focuses on preserving a true number of copies in the network, E-DRM minimizes the number of message broadcasts to conserve energy. In E-DRM, authors
propose an eager replication scheme for application on a Database State Machine (DSM) approach introduced in [41]. The
DSM supports atomic broadcasts in which nodes consent to the order and the set of delivered transactions.
E-DRM considers two mobile node types in the architecture of a MANET. Small Mobile Hosts (SMH) have restricted
resources, and Large Mobile Hosts (LMH) have a rich resource capacity. SMHs contain only a part of the database to
accomplish query tasks. Complete databases reside on LMHs and are responsible for broadcasting, certifying, and updating tasks. E-DRM minimizes message broadcasting overhead by buffering and periodic broadcasting at the beginning of
the broadcast cycle. The broadcast cycle commences when a client requests a SMH to update or read data. SMHs commit
the transaction to a LMH to be processed and broadcasted to other LMHs. LMHs commit or abort the transaction and certify it as a correct transaction. The cycle ends when a LMH broadcasts the result to a SMH to be transmitted to the client.

Fig. 3. E-DRM broadcast cycle.

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103

Fig. 3 shows the broadcast cycle in detail. The E-DRM approach considers the start of the broadcast cycle for dispatching
transactions to conserve energy. However, in real-time, all LMHs validate the transaction locally and conserve the energy
that would be consumed for message broadcasting and consistency management.
EECRS
EECRS [42] is an energy-aware content retrieval scheme for mobile cloud. It proposes a directive-selective forwarding
scheme for broadcasting interest packets in a MANET to obtain the contents. The EECRS approach is considered in an
Information Centric Network (ICN). The contents of an ICN are characterized by a hierarchical-based naming strategy.
Hence, names identify the requested contents. The EECRS improves energy efciency and scalability by eliminating
interest packets duplication to diminish trafc load. In addition, it searches multiple caches in parallel to ll the missing
gap of the networks node where interest packets fail to reach.
Nonetheless, the inability of the EECRS to guarantee a 100% hit rate through the proposed approach hinders its full application. Authors develop an intelligent broadcast approach for content inquiry in case of missing nodes. Although this
method ensures a content node hit, the imposed trafc overhead decelerates its performance and energy-efciency.
Market-Oriented Mobile Cloud Computing (MOMCC)
MOMCC [43] is a service-oriented architecture-based mobile application development framework. The prominent engaging entities of the MOMCC architecture are the central supervisory entity as governor, service programmer, mobile host,
and requester mobile node. In MOMCC, service developers create services and upload them in a central database for public availability. Individual mobile device owners who are interested in sharing their resources with nearby resource-poor
mobile devices register their interest with the governor. The governor authenticates and authorizes the registered mobile
devices that enter a request for hosting specic services. Moreover, the governor nds a secure proximate host for service
execution in response to the service requester. The MOMCC overcomes the imposed overhead of code ofoading in [44]
by restricting hosting to services executed without ofoading. The participating hosts as well as the governor, service programmer, and application developer will earn money on publishing, governing, hosting, and sharing services. The lack of
direct attachment between the service developer and the requester enhances privacy in the proposed framework.
The promise of this approach is the execution of services on a multitude of nearby mobile devices under the administration of a centrally trusted governing entity. The employment of adjacent mobile devices improves the availability of
resources, which can be leveraged to alleviate mobile devices storage limitations. Moreover, the communication of
mobile devices over a WLAN minimizes latency and conserves the energy, which would otherwise be dissipated on
cellular networks. However, the MOMCC architecture shortcomings, such as the restricted computing of host devices,
the necessity for ne-grained services, and the dependency on networking impede its employment for enterprise
applications and in ofine mode.
UbiqStor
UbiqStor [45] is an internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) cache server that reduces the response delay time
between mobile users and storage servers. The access to remote xed storage servers via the nearest immobile UbiqStor
server as a hybrid, multi-tier solution provides mobile clients energy-efcient access to rich storage capacity by eliminating long WAN latency in case of direct access to non-proximate storage servers. Initiator, target, and block management
modules are components of UbiqStor, which handles iSCSI read and write mobile clients requests through a caching
mechanism.
Despite the enhancement of transfer latency and response delays, wireless network intermittency and cache server
proximity factors can affect UbiqStors performance and can hinder its successful application.
Service-based Arbitrated Multi-tier Infrastructure (SAMI)
SAMI [15] is an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) hybrid model for mobile cloud computing that addresses storage
augmentation issues in addition to its main purpose of data-intensive computations in MCC. It promotes the I/O performance as well as the storage capacity of resource-poor mobile devices through a hybrid architecture that encompasses
three layers of an infrastructure, an arbitrator and a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). Mobile device users can benet
from SAMIs multi-tier infrastructure, which provides access to distant xed clouds, proximate MNOs, and adjacent MNO

Fig. 4. Cloud-based storage taxonomy.

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authorized dealers. SAMIs Multi-tier infrastructure provides decreased communication latency and energy efciency as a
consequence, to latency-sensitive applications by MNO authorized dealers. In case of demand for security-sensitive
services, MNOs are benecial by providing access to their resources via more secure cellular network in comparison to
Internet channel. When MNOs resources are incapable of meeting data-intensive services demand or not accessible after
operating hours, cloud infrastructures are exploited.
Reducing latency, establishment of trust, alleviating portability, and preventing energy dissipation are among promising
advantages of SAMI. Similar to UbiqStor [45], SAMI exploits a multi-tier architecture in its design. However, SAMI provides higher trust to mobile service consumers by leveraging resources of MNOs beside cloud and adjacent MNO dealers.
Furthermore, Table 2 summarizes the comparison results of the reviewed approaches based on the dened categories in
the taxonomy presented in Fig. 1. Table 2 advocates differentiations between mobile and immobile storage augmentation
approaches. We deduce from Table 2 that the mobility factor plays an important role and affects other specied factors.
Employing mobile cloud resources enhances energy efciency, WAN latency, locality, and context awareness, while utilizing
an immobile cloud back-end improves storage augmentation, data blocking, reliability, availability, data safety, security, and
trust.
4. Cloud-based storage characteristics
According to existing MSA approaches including the reviewed solutions in the previous section, we have devised a
cloud-based storage taxonomy. This classication is based on the prominent common characteristic and major differences
between various cloud storage resources including the architecture, capacity, tiering, mobility, locality, security, back-end
connectivity, and utilization cost factors. Fig. 4 depicts the cloud-based storage taxonomy and will be explained in this
section.
Architecture: The variety in the cloud resources architecture arises from diverse roles of the cloud in augmenting
resource-poor mobile devices. In a clientserver architecture, a multitude of rich stationary servers owned by vendors
and enterprises serve mobile devices as their clients to enhance their storage capacity. Public and private cloud resources
fall into this category. Mobile Network Operators (MNO), stationary computers in public places as well as authorized
MNO dealers, computing kiosks, and mobile devices are among other resources that have a server role and offers storage
services to storage-constrained mobile devices [16]. Amazon S3,1 Amazon EBS,2 HP Cloud Object Storage,3 and HP Cloud
Block Storage4 are well-known instances of storage services offered via the public cloud.
In peer-to-peer architecture, mobile devices are both a provider and consumer of services in a decentralized autonomous
network of proximate non-stationary devices that form a mobile storage service. Conferences, coffee shops, and university
campuses are scenarios in which ad hoc networks can be formed among participants that generally share common interests.
In this architecture, cloud storage services are exploited locally from the network of available mobile devices in the vicinity
for a period of time [35,38]. The storage capacity provided in a peer-to-peer architecture is incapable of competing with innite storage that is accessible via the public cloud in a clientserver architecture. Moreover, a peer-to-peer architecture
leverages a decentralized management, on the contrary to a clientserver architecture with centralized management. However, the exploitation of edge devices storage in a peer-to-peer network alleviates long WAN latency and device energy consumption. Moreover, caching information of same interest on participants devices is another advantage of this approach,
which lessens the trafc over a cellular network. Nonetheless, a guarantee of the persistency and redundancy of data is a
challenging task in this architecture due to node mobility and a participants disconnection, which may cause data loss when
the participant leaves the network or powers off the device [46]. The researchers efforts are toward the application of poweraware, real-time-aware, or partition-aware [38,47] approaches in wireless and ad hoc networks to conserve mobile devices
energy, to minimize communication volume, and to maintain the availability of data in a well-timed manner.
The hybrid architecture includes approaches that exploit nearby mobile devices that have a reduced latency as well as rich
servers supplying services in public and private clouds and that have proximate computers in the vicinity. Nevertheless, the
advantages of unleashing hybrid architectures necessitate novel implementation, administration, and resource scheduling
procedures that can lead to new challenges in MCC realm.
Capacity: Storage is one of the main services provided by the cloud as Storage as a Service (SaaS). The unlimited storage
capacity of the cloud can augment resource-constrained mobile devices. SaaS capacitates keeping data and applications
on the cloud resources and access them remotely. These unied, elastic, reliable, secure resources are usually located far
from mobile nodes. Hence, mobile devices require crossing an Internet channel via a wireless network to access the

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http://aws.amazon.com/.
http://aws.amazon.com/ebs/.
http://docs.hpcloud.com/object-storage/.
https://docs.hpcloud.com/block-storage/.

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unlimited storage of a distant public cloud. Dropbox,5 Google Docs,6 Amazon S3, iCloud,7 and SkyDrive8 are among the
renowned cloud storage services that facilitate the storage, sharing, and synchronization of data for desktop and mobile
device users. Several efforts such as UbiqStor [45] and MiSC [48] tried augmenting mobile devices using remote storage servers. The utilization of non-proximate cloud storage services over an Internet channel imposes increased WAN latency and
decreased security. An alternative solution is the use of constrained transient storage capacity via nearby immobile cloud
resources [49] and mobile devices [35]. Although leveraging this approach supplies limited storage to lightweight mobile
devices in comparison to innite storage capacity of the cloud, the reduced latency over cellular networks and Wi-Fi
enhances performance and addresses mobile devices energy deciency problem.
Tiering: Tiering refers to the number of layers a mobile device passes over to exploit cloud services. Approaches such as
[45,15] are referred to as multi-tier. For example, the three-tier infrastructure of SAMI [15] encompasses distant cloud
resources, proximate MNOs, and MNO-authorized dealers in the vicinity. Conversely, the one-tier category approaches
leverage one of the cloud resources for storage augmentation.
Multi-tier infrastructure provides rich computing beside energy- and latency-aware communication. It is realized
through the provision of several options for execution of services. While proximate cloud resources tier covers the
requirements of latency-sensitive services, the choice of exploiting reliable and well known organizations resources tier
is benecial to the services with security and trust requirements. Service providers in the telecommunication are trustful
options for the provision of resources over the secure cellular network as a cloud. The public clouds as the equipped tier
with elastic, innite storage and computing resources are the choice for data-intensive services when resources of trustworthy, proximate tiers are insufcient.
Mobility: Cloud resources are either mobile or immobile with respect to the mobility characteristic. When immobile,
cloud resources are delineated by a richer source of computation and storage capacity and no energy shortcomings compared with mobile resources. Public and private cloud servers, MNOs, and ne-grained resources such as available desktop computers in coffee shops and airports and cloudlets are instances of immobile storage resources. A cloudlet is a
proximate immobile cloud solution that concentrates on the computational augmentation of non-stationary neighboring
devices. Similarly, it can be applied for storage enhancement in which the VM-based ofoading method of the cloudlet is
employed for more storage capacity to proximate mobile devices. On the contrary, mobile resources provide contextawareness and lower latency, which can adversely impact the energy consumption and transmission period.
Location: Cloud storage resources are either located in the proximity or are distant. Approaches utilizing a multi-tier
infrastructure can benet from both and are referred to as hybrid resources. Distant resources, particularly public cloud
storage, are accessible via an Internet channel over a wireless medium. Long WAN latency and low security are common
challenges in wireless networks and are intensied through an Internet channel. However, proximate cloud resources are
accessible via both Ethernet and Internet channel. Utilizing nearby mobile or xed resources reduces latency, cost, and
communication overheads [50]. Stationary computers in public places and nearby mobile devices specically smartphones, laptops, and tablets are resources that can serve client mobile nodes in the vicinity.
Back-end Connectivity: This category considers the connectivity of back-end storage resources to the Internet. They are
either connected to a wired Internet connection or utilize a wireless medium. Mobile devices that play the role of servers
to other mobile nodes or participate in a peer-to-peer architecture are supported via a wireless connection to the Internet.
On the contrary, stationary servers, whether public or private cloud resources, or immobile computers in the neighborhood are equipped with a wired Internet connection.
5. Open issues
In this section, we present crucial open issues on MSA in MCC as several thought-provoking future research directions.
5.1. Energy-awareness
Energy conservation is one of the ultimate goals in mobile computing, cloud computing, and MCC domains. Although limitation of resources, processing, storage, and battery life of mobile devices can be alleviated through rich cloud-based
resources [16], high pre- and post-ofoading overheads of in/less-efciently designed MCC solutions can remarkably intensify the energy limitations of mobile devices. Therefore, energy-awareness using lightweight mobile augmentation frameworks [51], communication-aware approaches [52], and delity adaptation [53] solutions are essential to meet the
energy conservation in mobile devices. Lightweight solutions could mitigate the ofoading overheads (processing and
latency) [54] and ensure that the communication cost would not exceed the data computation benets of mobile devices.
Similarly, optimal communication-aware and delity adaptation solutions alleviate the energy efciency issue by leveraging
heterogeneous wireless networks (i.e., cellular and WLAN) for an energy-efcient trade-off for lightweight MCC solutions.
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https://www.dropbox.com.
http://docs.google.com.
https://www.icloud.com.
www.skydrive.com.

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5.2. Data integrity

Although the anywhere, anytime, any device principal of MCC is benecial to mobile device users, the variation and inhomogeneity of storage services provided by varied cloud vendors cause data integrity issue and necessitates additional investigation of MCC storage augmentation approaches. Data integrity issue jeopardizes the reliability of cloud service providers
and rises data retrieval issue as a consequence. To mitigate data integrity issue, efforts similar to [13] seek to provide a uniform interface to access various cloud storage services by exploiting middleware, SOA, and domain specic language
approaches. Moreover, management of data, which are distributed in various cloud storage services [30] is promising to
overcome data integrity issues in MCC. However, further research is required for a unied, standard storage infrastructure
and management of heterogeneity to alleviate data migration.
5.3. Trust
One of the most important concerns of the mobile end-users is to establish trust for the largely growing cloud vendors.
Although several studies have been conducted for building trust in cloud resources [15,5557], the transmission of user data
over insecure wireless networks (where stern supervision is lacking) and the Internet for storage of data in the cloud (where
users do not have any control) is inevitable. Heterogeneity of cloud infrastructures as well as mobile devices resource poverty and intrinsic traits intensify trust issue. Protection of user data by leveraging encryption and decryption techniques [34],
authorization, and authentication are among the approaches try to overcome trust issue in MCC. However, a necessity for
novel trust establishment techniques similar to [58] exists which are required to be lightweight with respect to limited
resources of mobile devices and wireless communication in MCC domain.
5.4. Data portability
Harnessing cloud resources as a comparatively more reliable and safe storage for data has alleviated the data lock-in
problem of mobile device users. Hence, the migration of data for messages and contact information between non-uniform
mobile devices is facilitated. However, data portability is still an issue for cloud consumers and due to this problem, users
are unable to transfer their data from Android-based to iOS-based mobile devices. Moreover, the heterogeneity of cloud services offered by diverse cloud vendors causes a vendor lock-in problem. Vendor lock-in is an attractive issue in business [59],
but a real concern for customers. Vendor lock-in makes customers dependent on services provided by specic cloud vendors,
as the incompatibility with other services or the consequence of cloud service providers policies.
Homogeneity between the existing cloud services architectures and programming languages is desired by end-users to
overcome code and data portability concerns. Solutions including adapter and particularly middleware [60] as well as standardization such as Open Cloud Computing Interface (OCCI)9 are among approaches addressing portability issues in cloud
computing. MCC data portability issues grant for further research that considers variant clouds policies, architectures, and storage structures to alleviate imposed challenges on the migration of data between dissimilar cloud storages and mobile devices.
6. Conclusions
This paper surveys the crucial intrinsic restrictions of mobile devices and storage augmentation issues in three domains of
mobile computing, cloud computing and MCC to devise a taxonomy of issues as the motivation for the emergence of effective
and efcient MSA approaches in MCC. A number of approaches leverage data partitioning whereas other approaches exploit
data replication, cache management, or SOA. Based on a review of the credible MSA approaches, the paper proposes a taxonomy of cloud-based storage.
A mobile devices local resource conservation, computational augmentation, and storage extension have been realized
through the convergence of mobile and cloud computing that has produced state-of-the-art MCC. This association and all
its inestimable privileges originate multi-dimensional heterogeneity in various domains, including platforms, operating systems, networks, and data structures. Pivotal sources of variations produce the generation of several non-trivial challenges for
mobile data, including portability, interoperability, integrity, and security. Therefore, the need for lightweight, energy- and
communication-aware MSA approaches is vital for the successful adoption of mobile computing. Mobility is one of the prominent factors affecting other factors in taxonomizing cloud-based storage resources in a positive or negative manner. Hence,
additional efforts are required to address a number of crucial MCC storage augmentation open issues. Energy-awareness,
data integrity, trust, and data portability are open issues, which specify future research directions in this area.
Acknowledgments
This work is funded by the University of Malaya Research Grant RP005D13ICT and by the Malaysian Ministry of Higher
Education under the University of Malaya High Impact Research Grant UM.C/625/1/HIR/MOE/FCSIT/03.
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