MeshCloud: Integrated cloudlet and wireless mesh network for real-time applications

From last decade, the tremendous growth of cloud computing and advancement in wireless communication technology has increased the usage of portable devices and facilitated mobile users to take advantage of mobile cloud services. Conversely, the high communication costs and inferior performance of mobile Internet over wide-area cellular network access obstruct the mobile devices´ capabilities in resource provisioning, on-demand applications and quality of service sensitivity during communication. In this paper, we proposed and deployed a network architecture that integrates localized and distributed mini-clouds (enhanced cloudlets) with low-cost and fast-deployable wireless mesh networks. We implemented a testbed, which is empowered with a real-life private cloudlet and an emulated wireless mesh network. The empirical results demonstrated that the proposed architecture is promising towards providing a localized, cost-effective wireless cloud access to users on the move.