External sources for mobile computing: The state-of-the-art, challenges, and future research

In recent years a new concept, called “mobile cloud computing” (MCC), has been put forward, it can build more powerful mobile cloud applications, and it is considered as one of the most highly discussed topics in terms of both academic community and computing industry. In this paper, we aim to understand why mobile computing chooses cloud computing as an external source. Thus, this paper presents a review on the concepts of cloud computing and grid computing. Then, it provides a comparison between both of the concepts regarding principles, functionalities, performance, as well as other critical features. Finally, it presents comprehensive overview of mobile cloud computing, and several open challenges that require future researches.