Mobile Agent Middleware for Mobile Computing

  • Authors:

  • Paolo Bellavista;Antonio Corradi;Cesare Stefanelli

  • Affiliations:

  • -;-;-

  • Venue:
  • Computer
  • Year:
  • 2001

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Abstract

Mobile computing requires an advanced infrastructure that integrates support protocols, mechanisms, and tools to dynamically reallocate and trace mobile users and terminals and permit coordination of mobile entities. Solutions to these issues require compliance with standards to interoperate with different systems and legacy components and a reliable security infrastructure based on standard cryptographic mechanisms and tools. The secure and open mobile agent (SOMA) distributed programming framework implements three mobile computing services-user virtual environment (UVE), mobile virtual terminal (MVT), and virtual resource management (VRM). UVE provides users with a uniform view of their working environments independent of current locations and specific terminals. MVT extends traditional terminal mobility by preserving the terminal execution state for restoration at new locations. VRM allows mobile users and terminals to maintain access to resources and services by requalifying the bindings and moving specific resources or services to permit load balancing and replication. The authors' implementation of their mobility middleware confirmed that a layered, modular, mobile agent-based service infrastructure can support a range of mobile computing requirements. They conclude that SOMA's UVE, MVT, and VRM service layer provides a flexible middleware that application designers can use to deploy Internet services in an environment where users, terminals, resources, and services are all mobile.