Efficiently sharing remote computing resources for mobile devices

Computation offloading has been a trending technology in the last decade. Even though computation offloading provides great advantages in terms of performance and energy efficiency for mobile devices, it is inapplicable when an Internet connection is not present or unstable to provide remote executions. In this article, to address these limitations, we introduce a middleware system that can distribute CPU-intensive or commonly used functionality to mobile or edge/cloud devices. Our system enables peer-to-peer communications between nearby devices through a near communication technology. Moreover, one communication group can be connected to other groups, so that a mobile application can effectively utilize remote computing resources by extending its execution range. To realize our goal, we developed a proof-of-concept middleware system by employing a publish/subscribe communication pattern and the Wi-Fi Direct technology. Through various case studies, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the introduced system and easy development of complicated mobile applications in resource-constrained execution environments.