Fundamentals of 5G Mobile Networks

5Mobile Clouds: Technology and Services for Future Communication Platforms

Patrick Seeling,¹ Frank H.P. Fitzek,² Daniel E. Lucani,² Marcos D. Katz³ and Morten V. Pedersen²

¹ Department of Computer Science, Central Michigan University, USA

² Department of Electronic Systems, Aalborg University, Denmark

³ Centre for Wireless Communications, University of Oulu, Finland

5.1 Introduction

Over the past decades, mobile communication has evolved from a predominantly voice-driven format to connect individuals to an enabler of a host of new paradigms that support always-on everywhere communications. Similarly, the individual human-to-human communication of the early days has given way to a now mobile-to-any communication paradigm, whereby “any” could refer to other fixed or mobile devices (autonomous or under direct human supervision), including those offering cloud-based services. Fueled by these new communications opportunities, we witnessed an immense growth of mobile devices and network traffic in ever expanding networks. In fact, recent projections from Cisco, Inc. [1] indicate that this trend will continue in the foreseeable future. Specifically, Cisco’s frequently updated Visual Networking Index (VNI) indicates the following in its latest revision for the years 2012– 2017:

• Networked traffic in general to increase threefold, whereby in 2017 approximately half of the IP traffic will originate from non-PC devices (with significant yearly increases for connected TVs, tablets, mobile ...