Supervisor: Prof. Giovanni E. Corazza, Prof. Daniele Tarchi

Abstract: Smart cities are considered a paradigm where wireless communications are an enhancing factor to make better urban services and improve the quality of life for citizens and visitors. The smart city scenario is composed by several parts: the wireless infrastructure, the user devices, sensing nodes, machine devices, access points, one or more cloud infrastructures. Moreover, for delivering the requested services lots of data are exchanged among the citizens and the devices, and these data need also to be elaborated in order to give the correct information to the users. Energy saving and performance improvement of Smart Mobile Devices have been widely recognized as primary issues. In fact the execution of every complex application is a big challenge due to the limited battery power and computation capacity of the mobile devices, especially in a smart environment where communication is considered a key to get better features in important areas such as mobility and transportation. In this context Mobile Cloud Computing and Heterogeneous Networks are viewed as infrastructures providing together a key solution for the major facing problems: the former allows to offload application to powerful remote servers, shortening execution time and extending battery life of mobile devices, while the latter allows the use of small cells in addition to macrocells, exploiting high-speed and stable connectivity in an ever grown mobile traffic trend.