This paper provides an overview of computation offloading for mobile systems, a technique that involves sending heavy computational tasks to resourceful servers to enhance the capabilities of devices with limited resources such as battery life, network bandwidth, storage capacity, and processor performance. The survey covers the background, techniques, systems, and research areas related to computation offloading, highlighting the evolution from feasibility studies to decision-making algorithms and infrastructure development. Key topics include the motivation for offloading (improving performance or saving energy), the types of mobile systems that benefit from offloading (laptops, PDAs, robots, sensors), and the application domains (multimedia, gaming, calculators, text editors, predictors). The paper also discusses enabling technologies such as virtualization, cloud computing, and various infrastructures that support offloading, including grid computing and cloud computing. The purpose is to provide a comprehensive reference for researchers and practitioners, identifying existing barriers and future research directions.This paper provides an overview of computation offloading for mobile systems, a technique that involves sending heavy computational tasks to resourceful servers to enhance the capabilities of devices with limited resources such as battery life, network bandwidth, storage capacity, and processor performance. The survey covers the background, techniques, systems, and research areas related to computation offloading, highlighting the evolution from feasibility studies to decision-making algorithms and infrastructure development. Key topics include the motivation for offloading (improving performance or saving energy), the types of mobile systems that benefit from offloading (laptops, PDAs, robots, sensors), and the application domains (multimedia, gaming, calculators, text editors, predictors). The paper also discusses enabling technologies such as virtualization, cloud computing, and various infrastructures that support offloading, including grid computing and cloud computing. The purpose is to provide a comprehensive reference for researchers and practitioners, identifying existing barriers and future research directions.