  Mobile devices are becoming the primary platforms for many users who always
roam around when accessing the cloud computing services. From this, the cloud
computing is integrated into the mobile environment by introducing a new
paradigm, mobile cloud computing. In the context of mobile computing, the
battery life of mobile device is limited, and it is important to balance the
mobility performance and energy consumption. Fortunately, cloud services
provide both opportunities and challenges for mobility management. Taking the
activities of cloud services accessing into consideration, we propose a
service-aware location update mechanism, which can detect the presence and
location of the mobile device without traditional periodic registration update.
Analytic model and simulation are developed to investigate the new mechanism.
The results demonstrate that the service-aware location update management can
reduce the location update times and handoff signaling, which can efficiently
save power consumption for mobile devices.
