3A-Net: resource Aware Application Adaptability in pervasive mobile Networks

The mobile (networking) platforms, as pervasive infrastructures, cannot continuously provide the same set of fixed configuration resources. For example, an available network may become insufficient in terms of quality of service or it may even become totally unavailable, to one or more of the involved partners. Alternatively, we may get into the coverage area of some other type of network, or the partner may become reachable/unreachable. Therefore, any application to be executed on such a platform needs to be adaptable to those changes i.e. to the availability of resources of any kind.

The main goal of this proposal is to create an application level development and run-time environment that allows the applications to utilize a diverse set of mobile as well as fixed networks and/or resources to achieve a high level of pervasiveness.

Challenge

The key challenge for developers in order to build pervasive applications is that the applications continuously have to adapt to highly dynamic environments and continue to function even if people and the resources move through the physical world. The existing approaches to building relatively pervasive distributed applications, such as client/server or multi-tier computing based on RPC or message passing do not meet the challenges. These technologies hide remote interactions, favor static composition through programmatic interfaces, and often encapsulate data and functionality in the form of objects, which make it hard to anticipate failures, extend applications and share and search data.

In particular, the project will involve addressing the issues such as Adaptability against contextual change, Adaptability against ad hoc compositions, Adaptability to changes in resource availability, Provision of pervasive collaborations, Service discovery , Scalability, Energy efficiency, Reliability and trustworthiness, Security, Sharing, Migration.


Overview

The system, apart from case applications to developed, is proposed to be configured in layers such as:

• Resource-to-Functionality Specification Engine
• Application Development Environment
• Abstracted Services Layer
• Resource Monitoring
• Resource Mappings & Adaptation Layer

This environment will enable the developers to abstract and group the resources according to certain application or system specific properties, which can be specified using an (ontological) approach. The developer, then, can specify which resources are to be monitored, and which functions or features of this application are to be activated when those resources are found to be available/unavailable.

The availability of the resources specified by the applications will continuously be monitored. When the availability of a resource (or a group of resources) changes from being unavailable to being available or vice versa, the specified function(s) will be activated or deactivated.

All the groups and abstractions for the resources will be mapped to the real resources. These resources may include networking platforms, computational infrastructures, partners in a collaborative application, etc. All abstracted services can be configured domain or application based. They will include the services to communicate, to collaborate, to access, to name, etc.

Adaptability, Pervasive, Ubiquitous, Mobility, Resource Monitoring, Wireless Networks, GSM Networks, Mobile Networks

• Application and platform development experience.
• Mobile computing experience.
• Experience in resource monitoring.
• Expertise in various wireless, mobile, GSM, sensor etc. networking environments.

• Contribution to the project proposal.
• Interface specifications including application-development environment interface specification, low/resource level platform specification and its interface to the higher layers.
• Development of resource aware application environment.
• Abstracted Services Layer implementation.
• Resource Monitoring implementation.
• Resource mappings & Adaptation layer implementation.
• A case application development, chosen from one of the domains such as health, emergency, natural disasters, or any other specific application.
• Creation of a test environment driven by a pervasive mobile prototype system.

• SMEs
• Research organizations
• Universities

No