An integrated cloud-based framework for mobile phone sensing

Abstract

Nowadays mobile phones are not only communication devices, but also a source of rich sensory data that can be collected and exploited by distributed people-centric sensing applications. Among them, environmental monitoring and emergency response systems can particularly benefit from people-based sensing. Due to the limited resources of mobile devices, sensed data are usually offloaded to the cloud. However, state-of-the art solutions lack a unified approach suitable to support diverse applications, while reducing the energy consumption of the mobile device. In this paper, we specifically address mobile devices as rich sources of multi-modal data collected by users. In this context, we propose an integrated framework for storing, processing and delivering sensed data to people-centric applications deployed in the cloud. Our integrated platform is the foundation of a new delivery model, namely, Mobile Application as a Service (MAaaS), which allows the creation of people-centric applications across different domains, including participatory sensing and mobile social networks. We specifically address a case study represented by an emergency response system for fire detection and alerting. Through a prototype testbed implementation, we show that the proposed framework can reduce the energy consumption of mobile devices, while satisfying the application requirements.