TY - GEN
T1 - A lightweight middleware protocol for ad hoc distributed object computing in ubiquitous computing environments
AU - Yau, Sik-Sang
AU - Karim, F.
N1 - Funding Information:
This research is supported in part by National Science Foundation under grant number ANI-0123980. Microsoft Research donated part of the equipment used in the experiments. We would like to thank Deepak Chandrasekar for his assistance during our experimentation with RKF.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2003 IEEE.
PY - 2003
Y1 - 2003
N2 - Devices in ubiquitous computing environments are usually embedded, wearable, and handheld, have resource constraints, and are all connected to each other through wireless connections and other computers possibly through fixed network infrastructures, such as the Internet. These devices may form numerous webs of short-range and often low-power mobile ad hoc networks to exchange information. Distributed object computing (DOC) middleware technologies have been successful in promoting high quality and reusable distributed software for enterprise-oriented environments. In order to reap the same benefit in ubiquitous computing environments, it is important to note that the natural interactions among distributed objects in ubiquitous computing environments are quite different due to various factors, such as bandwidth constraints, unpredictable device mobility, network topology change, and context-sensitivity (or situation-awareness) of application objects. Hence, the interactions among distributed objects tend to be more spontaneous and short-lived rather than predictable and long-term. In this paper, a middleware protocol, RKF, to facilitate distributed object-based application software to interact in an ad hoc fashion in ubiquitous computing environments is presented. RKF addresses both spontaneous object discovery and context-sensitive object data exchange. Our experimental results, based on RKF's implementation and evaluation inside the object request broker of our RCSM middleware test bed, indicate that it is lightweight, has good performance, and can be easily used in PDA-like devices.
AB - Devices in ubiquitous computing environments are usually embedded, wearable, and handheld, have resource constraints, and are all connected to each other through wireless connections and other computers possibly through fixed network infrastructures, such as the Internet. These devices may form numerous webs of short-range and often low-power mobile ad hoc networks to exchange information. Distributed object computing (DOC) middleware technologies have been successful in promoting high quality and reusable distributed software for enterprise-oriented environments. In order to reap the same benefit in ubiquitous computing environments, it is important to note that the natural interactions among distributed objects in ubiquitous computing environments are quite different due to various factors, such as bandwidth constraints, unpredictable device mobility, network topology change, and context-sensitivity (or situation-awareness) of application objects. Hence, the interactions among distributed objects tend to be more spontaneous and short-lived rather than predictable and long-term. In this paper, a middleware protocol, RKF, to facilitate distributed object-based application software to interact in an ad hoc fashion in ubiquitous computing environments is presented. RKF addresses both spontaneous object discovery and context-sensitive object data exchange. Our experimental results, based on RKF's implementation and evaluation inside the object request broker of our RCSM middleware test bed, indicate that it is lightweight, has good performance, and can be easily used in PDA-like devices.
KW - Reconfigurable Context-Sensitive Middleware
KW - Ubiquitous computing environments
KW - context-sensitive communications
KW - context-sensitivity
KW - distributed object computing middleware
KW - lightweight middleware protocol
KW - mobile ad hoc networks
KW - situation-awareness
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84966908158&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1109/ISORC.2003.1199252
DO - 10.1109/ISORC.2003.1199252
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84966908158
T3 - Proceedings - 6th IEEE International Symposium on Object-Oriented Real-Time Distributed Computing, ISORC 2003
SP - 172
EP - 179
BT - Proceedings - 6th IEEE International Symposium on Object-Oriented Real-Time Distributed Computing, ISORC 2003
A2 - Puschner, Peter
A2 - Nakajima, Tatsuo
A2 - Ghafoor, Arif
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
T2 - 6th IEEE International Symposium on Object-Oriented Real-Time Distributed Computing, ISORC 2003
Y2 - 14 May 2003 through 16 May 2003
ER -