Adaptive cloud offloading of augmented reality applications on smart devices for minimum energy consumption

The accuracy of an augmented reality (AR) application is highly dependent on the resolution of the object’s image and the device’s computational processing capability. Naturally, a mobile smart device equipped with a high-resolution camera becomes the best platform for portable AR services. AR applications require significant energy consumption and very fast response time, which are big burdens to the smart device. However, there are very few ways to overcome these burdens. Computation offloading via mobile cloud computing has the potential to provide energy savings and enhance the performance of applications executed on smart devices. Therefore, in this paper, adaptive mobile computation offloading of mobile AR applications is considered in order to determine optimal offloading points that satisfy the required quality of experience (QoE) while consuming minimum energy of the smart device. AR feature extraction based on SURF algorithm is partitioned into sub-stages in order to determine the optimal AR cloud computational offloading point based on conditions of the smart device, wireless and wired networks, and AR service cloud servers. Tradeoffs in energy savings and processing time are explored also taking network congestion and server load conditions into account.