On the Need of Network coding for Mobile Clouds

This paper advocates the need of network coding for mobile clouds. Mobile clouds as well as network coding are describing two novel concepts. The concept of mobile clouds describes the potential of mobile devices to communicate with each other and form a cooperative cluster in which new services and potentials are created. Network coding on the other side enables the mobile cloud to communicate in a very efficient and secure way in terms of energy and bandwidth usage. Even though network coding can be applied in a variety of communication networks, it has some inherent features that makes it suitable for mobile clouds. The paper will list the benefits of network coding for mobile clouds as well as introduce both concepts in a tutorial way. The results used throughout this paper are collaborative work of different research institutes, but mainly taken from the mobile device group at Aalborg University.