A Pro-Active middleware platform for mobile environments

2001

Advances in wireless networking technology over the previous decade generated a new computing paradigm known as mobile computing, defined by users carrying portable devices that access shared infrastructures independent of their physical location; this allows flexible communication between people and continuous access to networked services [Forman & Zahorjan, 94].

2003

Current advances in portable devices, wireless technologies, and distributed systems have created a mobile computing environment that is characterized by a large scale of dynamism. Diversities in network connectivity, platform capability, and resource availability can significantly affect the application performance. Traditional middleware systems, like CORBA and DCOM, have achieved great success in dealing with the heterogeneity in the underlying hardware and software platforms, offering portability, and facilitating development of distributed applications. However, they are not prepared to offer proper support for addressing the dynamic aspects of mobile systems. Modern distributed applications need a middleware that is capable of adapting to environment changes and that supports the required level of quality of service. This paper represents the experience of several research projects related to next generation middleware systems. We first define middleware and indicate the major challenges in mobile computing systems. We then take a broader perspective and try to identify the main requirements for mobile middleware systems. Following this, we review the different categories of mobile middleware technologies and show their strength and weakness. We finally present a simples discussion on the surveyed work and provide a number of observations about the remaining issues.

International Symposium on Parallel Computing in Electrical Engineering (PARELEC'06), 2006

Mobile networks provide mobile users with access to computing services and resources anywhere, anytime. While each mobile device has limited resources and services, all of them, by networking, can create a powerful computing mobile platform. The role of the mobile middleware is to facilitate this platform. This paper dicusses the main features of mobile networks that represent challenges to the design of a cost-effective mobile middleware layer, then presents several ongoing middleware projects and, in the end, focuses on an original solution.

Mobile Networks and Applications, 2011

The most visible technology advance in the last decade is arguably the popular uses of wireless mobile handsets such as cellular phones. These devices are not just for phone calls, but also for the Internet access and management of mobile data. Many of them are equipped with positioning systems such as GPS, creating significant commercial opportunities for a range of new applications such as location-based services. Indeed, despite the recent economic downturn, the mobile computing industry continues to boom.

2002

Abstract Mobile information access involves retrieving information from wired service providers. Often there are situations where the information is not available from a single service provider but can be obtained by combining information from multiple service providers. It is inefficient and sometimes impossible for a resource poor mobile device connected over a low bandwidth wireless link to coordinate such activity.

… on Distributed Computing Systems Workshops, 2003. …, 2003

Recently mobile devices became powerful enough to support outstanding applications envisioned for ubiquitous and pervasive computing. In these environments applications are usually built on top of a middleware in order to enable service reuse on different levels. Existing middleware approaches, however, aim at either operation in the network infrastructure or are built for specific purposes. In this paper an approach for structuring services and their management into several well defined layers is introduced and their requirements are discussed in detail.

2003

Abstract. Middleware layers placed between user clients and application servers have been used to perform a variety of functions to support the vision of nomadic computing across varying platforms. In previous work we have used middleware to perform a new capability, application session handoff, using a single Middleware Server to provide all functionality. However, to improve the scalability of our architecture, we have designed an efficient distributed Middleware Service layer that properly maintains application session handoff semantics while being able to service a large number of clients. We show that this service layer improves the scalability of general client-to-application server interaction as well as the specific case of application session handoff. We detail protocols involved in performing handoff and analyse an implementation of the architecture that supports the use of a real medical teaching tool. From experimental results it can be seen that our Middleware Service e...

This paper describes a system we have developed to enable applications to follow mobile users as they move. If an application built using our system has made connections to distributed information resources, then these connections are re-established seamlessly after movement. It is thus possible to support mobility within applications as complex as multi-user distributed multimedia applications. The support system to achieve this is provided at the middleware level, i.e. between the environment (OS, network and system services) and the application levels. The interface can thus be systemindependent and the system more easily extended than if it was implemented within the operating system. One system requirement is tracking the location of users and equipment and to this end a location-awareness service has been developed. Another requirement is the availability of components for constructing mobile applications and, for this, two types of mobile object are available. Firstly, mobile...

Developing ubiquitous applications is particularly complex. Beyond the dynamic aspect of such applications, the evolution of computing towards the multiplication of mobile access terminals is not making things easier. One solution to simplifying the development and use of such applications is to use software platforms dedicated to deployment and adaptation of applications and handling the heterogeneity of peripherals. They allow designers to focus on business aspects and facilitate reuse. The Kalimucho platform was designed and developed against this background. It executes and supervises applications based on software components.