ABSTRACT
Recently, cloud computing has drawn a lot of attention from both academia and industry. It has advantages over traditional computing paradigms, such as avoiding capital investments and operational expenses for end-users. The essential characteristics of cloud computing include on-demand self-service, broadband network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity, and measured service [14]. Furthermore, with recent advances in mobile communication technologies, mobile devices, and mobile applications, more and more end-users access cloud computing systems via mobile devices, such as smartphones. As such, mobile cloud computing is widely considered as a promising computing paradigm with a huge market. In traditional mobile computing systems, mobile devices usually have limited computing and storage capabilities. In contrast, utilizing the powerful computing and storage resources available in the cloud environments, mobile cloud computing can enable the use of cutting-edge multimedia services. In the cloud, the resources have much higher processing and storage capacities compared to what traditional mobile devices can provide. And thus, the cloud can offer a much richer media experience than current mobile applications.
