Cloud radio access networks in mobile cloud computing systems

Recently, as a new information technology (IT) paradigm, cloud computing has become one of the hottest topics in both academia and industry. Cloud computing is a model for enabling on-demand access to a shared pool of configurable resources (e.g., servers, storage, applications, services, etc.). The essential characteristics of cloud computing include on-demand self-service, broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity, and measured service [26]. Several service models are supported, including cloud software as a service, cloud platform as a service, and cloud infrastructure as service [24]. Cloud computing has attracted significant attention, and several commercial clouds, including Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure, and Google App Engine, have been providing services to users