{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,12]],"date-time":"2025-10-12T04:16:28Z","timestamp":1760242588381,"version":"build-2065373602"},"reference-count":113,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"4","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2017,11,13]],"date-time":"2017-11-13T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1510531200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["JSAN"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Mobile cloud computing (MCC) is becoming a popular mobile technology that aims to augment local resources of mobile devices, such as energy, computing, and storage, by using available cloud services and functionalities. The offloading process is one of the techniques used in MCC to enhance the capabilities of mobile devices by moving mobile data and computation-intensive operations to cloud platforms. Several techniques have been proposed to perform and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the offloading process, such as multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA). MCDA is a well-known concept that aims to select the best solution among several alternatives by evaluating multiple conflicting criteria, explicitly in decision making. However, as there are a variety of platforms and technologies in mobile cloud computing, it is still challenging for the offloading process to reach a satisfactory quality of service from the perspective of customers\u2019 computational service requests. Thus, in this paper, we conduct a literature review that leads to a better understanding of the usability of the MCDA methods in the offloading operation that is strongly reliant on the mobile environment, network operators, and cloud services. Furthermore, we discuss the challenges and opportunities of these MCDA techniques for offloading research in mobile cloud computing. Finally, we recommend a set of future research directions in MCDA used for the mobile cloud offloading process.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/jsan6040025","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2017,11,13]],"date-time":"2017-11-13T11:12:36Z","timestamp":1510571556000},"page":"25","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":16,"title":["Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis Methods in the Mobile Cloud Offloading Paradigm"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"6","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-2689-0382","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Hind","family":"Bangui","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Institute of Computer Science, Masaryk University, 602 00 Brno, Czech Republic"},{"name":"Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University, 602 00 Brno, Czech Republic"},{"name":"Applied Mathematics and Computer Science Laboratory, Cadi Ayyad University, Marrakech 40000, Morocco"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Mouzhi","family":"Ge","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Institute of Computer Science, Masaryk University, 602 00 Brno, Czech Republic"},{"name":"Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University, 602 00 Brno, Czech Republic"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Barbora","family":"Buhnova","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Institute of Computer Science, Masaryk University, 602 00 Brno, Czech Republic"},{"name":"Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University, 602 00 Brno, Czech Republic"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Said","family":"Rakrak","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Applied Mathematics and Computer Science Laboratory, Cadi Ayyad University, Marrakech 40000, Morocco"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Said","family":"Raghay","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Applied Mathematics and Computer Science Laboratory, Cadi Ayyad University, Marrakech 40000, Morocco"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-2933-2290","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Tomas","family":"Pitner","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Institute of Computer Science, Masaryk University, 602 00 Brno, Czech Republic"},{"name":"Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University, 602 00 Brno, Czech Republic"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2017,11,13]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"766","DOI":"10.1109\/ACCESS.2016.2529723","article-title":"Internet of things and big data analytics for smart and connected communities","volume":"4","author":"Sun","year":"2016","journal-title":"IEEE Access"},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1587","DOI":"10.1002\/wcm.1203","article-title":"A survey of mobile cloud computing: Architecture, applications, and approaches","volume":"13","author":"Dinh","year":"2013","journal-title":"Wirel. 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