Mobile Transparent Computing to Enable Ubiquitous Operating Systems and Applications
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Huang, S.-Z., Wu, M., and Xiong, Y.-H. Paper: Mobile Transparent Computing to Enable Ubiquitous Operating Systems and Applications Su-Zhen Huang, Min Wu, and Yong-Hua Xiong School of Information Science and Engineering, Central South University Yuelu District, Changsha, Hunan 410083, China E-mail: [email protected] [Received May 22, 2013; accepted November 18, 2013] Mobile devices have emerged as an indispensable part ter (IDC) shows that the worldwide shipment of mobile of our daily life, one that has resulted in an increased devices in 2011 was about 488 million, far more than that demand for mobile devices to be able to access the In- the corresponding number of PCs (415 million), and by ternet and obtain a variety of network services. How- 2015, more users will access the Internet wirelessly via ever, mobile devices are often constrained by limited mobile devices than from ordinary PCs. In spite of ad- storage, huge power consumption, and low process- vances in the performance of mobile devices, challenges ing capability. This paper presents a new computing will continue to exist on such platforms, and may even se- mode, mobile transparent computing (MTC), which vere, with the conflict of high power consumption with fi- combines ubiquitous mobile networks with transpar- nite battery life, the requirements of rich applications, and ent computing, to address the above challenges and boring issues such as software updating and leak patching, possibly to enable a new world of ubiquitous operat- the accumulation of data, and the limited storage avail- ing systems (OSes) and applications with the follow- able. ing characteristics: (1) Mobile devices with no OSes Great efforts have been devoted to address these chal- pre-installed are able to load and boot multiple OSes lenges. David [1] introduces network computing into on demand through a transparent network; (2) All re- mobile devices and enables more applications on mo- sources, including the operating system (OS), appli- bile devices with limited resources by applying Mobile cations, and user data, are stored on a transparent OSGI.NET technology. Mobile cloud computing [2] and server (TS) rather than a mobile terminal, and can be the mobile Internet [3] has also been applied to the related streamed to be executed on mobile devices in small ex- research. Yanuarius [4] proposes a heterogeneous wire- ecution blocks; (3) All the personalized services (ap- less and mobile P2P network-based mobile cloud comput- plications and data) can be synchronized to any other ing service, which achieves resource sharing among mo- devices with the same user credential. Specifically, bile users. A rendering adaptation technique [5], which we propose a Pre OS technique, which can achieve can dynamically change the richness and complexity of feature (1) in the MTC model by initializing the mo- graphic rendering, is proposed to enable rich mobile mul- bile device and driving a network interface card (NIC) timedia applications, especially mobile games. In particu- prior to OS loading, thereby transferring the needed lar, the University of Melbourne has set up a graduate dis- OS streaming block to the mobile device. Experimen- tributed computing course [6], which offers experimen- tal results conducted on the tablet demo-board with tal conditions for the study of mobile computing systems the model OK6410 based on the ARM11 architecture programming. Those studies, however, cannot support demonstrate that the Pre OS is able to support remote multi-OS and multi-platform, which therefore constrains boot and streaming execution for both Android and the applications that can be used. Linux OS with satisfactory performance. Transparent computing [7] offers a new perspective for multi-OS support. In 2011, Zhang and Zhou presented the TransOS [8], based on transparent computing, and an Keywords: mobile transparent computing, transparent example was given based on 4VP + (4 Virtual Layers, 2 computing, pre OS, multi-OS, net boot Protocols) [9] running on an ordinary PC with EFI BIOS, which can support net boot and normal use of Windows and Linux perfectly. In order to implement transparent 1. Introduction computing and to ensure performance stability, a virtual storage device model was introduced [10], with which In recent years, smart mobile devices like smart phones I/O requests are redirected to the remote server from lo- and tablets, which are thin and portable user-friendly de- cal storage. Additionally, a remote resource management vices with touch-screen interaction, rich multimedia ac- method for transparent computing [11] was developed to cess and an Internet connection, have spread through- manage the resources, including OS images, user data and out the world. The data released by Internet Data Cen- applications, on the transparent server (TS). 32 Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence Vol.18 No.1, 2014 and Intelligent Informatics MTC to Enable Ubiquitous Operating Systems and Applications At present, transparent computing systems have been partly implemented on PCs. In this paper, we focus on their implementation on mobile devices and propose the concept and principles of mobile transparent comput- Tablet PC server ing (MTC), which not only enables mobile users to access PC rich applications from any mobile device and any plat- 7UDQVSDUHQW form, but also engages them in an alternative multi-OS QHWZRUN environment through the network. Specifically, this pa- User Smart phone per presents a Pre OS technique to implement MTC. It is able to load and boot multiple operating systems from the Transparent Transparent Notebook network. The Pre OS can be divided into Pre OS server client server and Pre OS client. The former stores and manages all re- PDA sources including OS images, user data, and so on, while Fig. 1. Structure of transparent computing system. the latter is responsible for device initialization, net com- munication, and multi-OS remote booting. The Pre OS makes it possible for a mobile device to run different OSes and applications by mounting the network filesystem lo- quirements of mobile applications. Mobile communica- cally after loading the system kernel in file form from the tion includes ad-hoc and infrastructure networks as well network. as communication properties, protocols, data formats, and concrete technologies. 2. Mobile Transparent Computing 2.2. Transparent Computing Transparent computing is a new kind of pervasive com- Generally, operating systems such as Android, iOS, and puting [7], whose goal is to provide users with transpar- Windows Phone are pre-installed in the local storage of ent services, where users are concerned only with whether mobile devices. These OSes, however, must be supported they can get the service or not, and have no need to know by the hardware. Unfortunately, most devices can only the underlying details of the required services. It consists support one specific operating system under normal cir- of transparent clients, transparent network, and transpar- cumstances, which constrains the applications that can be ent server. Specifically, the clients are not proposed to used on a device. Furthermore, if someone wants to expe- have any operating system or application software on it rience an application, for example, Crazy Birds, the soft- for having few or even no local storage. Numerous OSes ware must be downloaded and installed on that device. and applications are stored in the remote server and can be With the accumulation of applications and user data, the streamed to the clients via the transparent network. When limited storage of mobile devices fails to meet the increas- a task processed on a client is completed, all data and in- ing needs of users. formation will be submitted to the transparent server. The MTC is an inheritance and extension of transpar- Figure 1 shows the typical structure of a transparent ent computing, in which resources are centrally managed computing system. A large server or an ordinary PC can and stored in a group of remote servers without taking up be considered as the transparent server, which offers re- the limited local storage. Within the MTC, mobile users liable and extensible storage and management of OS im- are offered various transparent services, such as access ages, applications, and user data. The transparent client to multi-OS, rich applications, and data, all without pre- can be any device with computing power, such as a PC, installation, and available on any mobile device. smart phone, Tablet, PDA, etc., and it is equipped only For the purpose of grasping a better understanding of with specific communication protocols and management the MTC, this section begins with two basic concepts: procedures rather than a pre-installed OS. After the boot mobile computing and transparent computing. The con- of a chosen OS through the wired or wireless network cept and principles of the MTC will then be presented. from the transparent server, the operations of the trans- parent computing system are just the same with normal systems, while all the changes or modifications will be 2.1. Mobile Computing saved to the TS. Wikipedia defines mobile computing as human- computer interaction wherein a computer is expected to 2.3. Mobile Transparent Computing be transported during normal usage. Mobile computing can display, collect, and transfer information from a mo- 2.3.1. Concept and Structure bile device to an information system using one or more As mentioned before, the MTC is an inheritance and data transfer methods. It involves three aspects, namely extension of transparent computing. We define it as a mo- mobile hardware, mobile software, and mobile commu- bile device-suitable computing mode consisting of mobile nication. Specifically, the hardware is the mobile device computing and transparent computing, which is obvious or device components, such as the smart phone or PDA in the framework of MTC shown in Fig. 2.InanMTCen- itself. The software deals with the characteristics and re- vironment, mobile OSes (iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Vol.18 No.1, 2014 Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence 33 and Intelligent Informatics Huang, S.-Z., Wu, M., and Xiong, Y.-H.