With the tremendous growth of mobile devices, e.g, smartphones,
tablets and PDAs in recent years, users are looking for more advanced
platforms in order to use their computational applications
(e.g., processing and storage) in a faster and more convenient
way. In addition, mobile devices are capable of using cloud-based
applications and the use of such technology is growing in popularity.
However, one major concern is how to efficiently access these
cloud-based applications when using a resource-constraint mobile
device. Essentially applications require a continuous Internet connection
which is difficult to obtain in challenged environments
that lack an infrastructure for communication (e.g., in sparse
or rural areas) or areas with infrastructure (e.g., urban or high
density areas) with restricted/full of interference access networks
and even areas with high costs of Internet roaming. In these situations
the use of mobile opportunistic networks may be extended
to avail cloud-based applications to the user.
In this thesis we explore the emergence of extending cloud-based
applications with mobile opportunistic networks in challenged
environments and observe how local user’s social interactions
and collaborations help to improve the overall message delivery
performance in the network. With real-world trace-driven simulations,
we compare and contrast the different user’s behaviours in
message forwarding, the impact of the various network loads (e.g.,
number of messages) along with the long-sized messages and the
impact of different wireless networking technologies, in various
opportunistic routing protocols in a challenged environment