Context-aware task scheduling for resource constrained mobile devices

Abstract

Nowadays, mobile devices are very popular and accessible. Therefore users prefer to substitute mobile devices for stationary computers to run their applications. On the other hand, mobile devices are always resource-poor in contrast with stationary computers and portability and limitation on their weight and size restrict mobile devises' processor speed, memory size and battery lifetime. One of the most common solutions, in pervasive computing environments, to resolve the challenges of computing on resource constrained mobile devices is cyber foraging, wherein nearby and more powerful stationary computers called surrogates are exploited to run the whole or parts of applications. However, cyber foraging is not beneficial for all circumstances. So, there should be a solver unit to choose the best location either the mobile device or a surrogate to run a task. In this paper, we propose a mechanism to select the best method between local execution on the mobile device and remote execution on nearby surrogates to run an application by calculating the execution cost according to the context's metrics such as mobile device, surrogates, network, and application specifications. Experimental results show the superiority of our proposed mechanism compared to local execution of the application on the mobile device and blind task offloading with respect to latency. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.