Middleware Frameworks for Mobile Cloud Computing, Internet of Things and Cloud of Things: A Review

Abstract

Mobile cloud computing (MCC) is an extension of cloud computing (CC) technologies. It provides seamless access of different cloud services to smart mobile devices (SMDs). There is no denying that CC can be scaled to a great extent in terms of computing, storage and other services, but the SMDs used for accessing those services are limited on battery capacity, storage and computing power due to their small form factors. The limitations of SMDs can be minimised/resolved by using MCC platforms. Though MCC is advantageous in many ways, it has its own inherent challenges and issues due to the heterogeneous hardware and software platforms used by SMDs and CC platforms, which makes it difficult to have interoperable services and the development of applications for those devices. This paper studied recently (from 2012 onwards) proposed/developed middlewares for the Internet of things (IoT), cloud of things (CoT), context-aware middlewares (CaMs) and mobile cloud middlewares (MCMs). Different middleware architectures are chosen, as in many cases, these technologies converge in terms of features, functions and services they provide. The study finds that the present middlewares lack in providing an integrated solution that complies with interoperability, portability, adaptability, context awareness, security and privacy, service discovery, fault tolerance requirements. At the end of the paper, the challenges pertaining to achieve portability, interoperability, context awareness, security are discussed and identify the gaps in the existing approaches in MCC interoperability and context adaptability. © 2020, Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.