L2imbo: a distributed systems platform for mobile computing

ABSTRACT

Mobile computing environments increasingly consist of a range of supporting technologies offering a diverse set of capabilities to applications and end-systems. Such environments are characterised by sudden and dramatic changes in the quality-of-service (QoS) available to applications and users. Recent work has shown that distributed systems platforms can assist applications to take advantage of these changes in QoS and, more specifically, facilitate applications to adapt to their environment. However, the current state-of-the-art in these platforms reflects their fixed network origins through their choice of synchronous connection-oriented communications paradigms. In this paper we argue that these paradigms are not well suited to operation in the emerging mobile environments. Furthermore, we offer an alternative programming paradigm based on tuple spaces which, we believe, offers a number of benefits within a mobile context. The paper presents the design, implementation and evaluation of a new platform based on this paradigm.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.1 Network Architecture and Design
          Subjects: Wireless communication

Additional Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
  C.4 PERFORMANCE OF SYSTEMS
      Subjects: Performance attributes

  D. Software
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
      D.3.2 Language Classifications
          Subjects: Specialized application languages

General Terms:
Algorithms, Design, Languages, Performance