This paper discusses the challenges in computer systems research posed by the emerging field of pervasive computing. It first examines the relationship of this new field to its predecessors: distributed systems and mobile computing. It then identifies four new research thrusts: effective use of smart spaces, invisibility, localized scalability, and masking uneven conditioning. Next, it sketches a couple of hypothetical pervasive computing scenarios, and uses them to identify key capabilities missing from today's systems. The paper closes with a discussion of the research necessary to develop these capabilities.

Context-aware computing is a mobile computing paradigm in which applications can discover and take advantage of contextual information (such as user location, time of day, nearby people and devices, and user activity). Since it was proposed about a decade ago, many researchers have studied this topic and built several context-aware applications to demonstrate the usefulness of this new technology. Context-aware applications (or the system infrastructure to support them), however, have never been widely available to everyday users. In this survey of research on context-aware systems and applications, we looked in depth at the types of context used and models of context information, at systems that support collecting and disseminating context, and at applications that adapt to the changing context. Through this survey, it is clear that context-aware research is an old but rich area for research. The difficulties and possible solutions we outline serve as guidance for researchers hoping to make context-aware computing a reality. 1.

Interact hosting centers serve multiple service sites from a common hardware base. This paper presents the design and implementation of an architecture for resource management in a hosting center op-erating system, with an emphasis on energy as a driving resource management issue for large server clusters. The goals are to provi-sion server resources for co-hosted services in a way that automati-cally adapts to offered load, improve the energy efficiency of server dusters by dynamically resizing the active server set, and respond to power supply disruptions or thermal events by degrading service in accordance with negotiated Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Our system is based on an economic approach to managing shared server resources, in which services "bid " for resources as a func-tion of delivered performance. The system continuously moni-tors load and plans resource allotments by estimating the value of their effects on service performance. A greedy resource allocation algorithm adjusts resource prices to balance supply and demand, allocating resources to their most efficient use. A reconfigurable server switching infrastructure directs request traffic to the servers assigned to each service. Experimental results from a prototype confirm that the system adapts to offered load and resource avail-ability, and can reduce server energy usage by 29 % or more for a typical Web workload. 1.

Composed of tens of thousands of tiny devices with very limited resources ("motes"), sensor networks are subject to novel systems problems and constraints. The large number of motes in a sensor network means that there will often be some failing nodes; networks must be easy to repopu-late. Often there is no feasible method to recharge motes, so energy is a precious resource. Once deployed, a network must be reprogrammable although physically unreachable, and this reprogramming can be a significant energy cost. We present Maté, a tiny communication-centric virtual machine designed for sensor networks. Mat~'s high-level in-terface allows complex programs to be very short (under 100 bytes), reducing the energy cost of transmitting new programs. Code is broken up into small capsules of 24 instructions, which can self-replicate through the network. Packet sending and reception capsules enable the deploy-ment of ad-hoc routing and data aggregation algorithms. Maté's concise, high-level program representation simplifies programming and allows large networks to be frequently re-programmed in an energy-efficient manner; in addition, its safe execution environment suggests a use of virtual ma-chines to provide the user/kernel boundary on motes that have no hardware protection mechanisms.

In this paper, we demonstrate that a collaborative relationship between the operating system and applications can be used to meet user-specified goals for battery duration. We first show how applications can dynamically modify their behavior to conserve energy. We then show how the Linux operating system can guide such adaptation to yield a batterylife of desired duration. By monitoring energy supply and demand, it is able to select the correct tradeoff between energy conservation and application quality. Our evaluation shows that this approach can meet goals that extend battery life by as much as 30%.

We present the design and implementation of an end-to-end architecture for Internet host mobility using dynamic updates to the Domain Name System (DNS) to track host location. Existing TCP connections are retained using secure and efficient connection migration, enabling established connections to seamlessly negotiate a change in endpoint IP addresses without the need for a third party. Our architecture is secure---name updates are effected via the secure DNS update protocol, while TCP connection migration uses a novel set of Migrate options---and provides a pure end-system alternative to routing-based approaches such as Mobile IP. Mobile IP was

Ubiquitous computing poses a number of challenges for software architecture.

Rover is a software toolkit that supports the construction of both mobile-transparent and mobile-aware appli-cations. The objective of the mobile-transparent approach istodevelop proxies for system services that hide the mobile characteristics of the environment from applications. Since applications can be run without alteration, the mobile-transparent approach is appealing. However, to excel, applications operating in the harsh conditions of a mobile environment must often be aware of and take an active part in mitigating those conditions. The Rover toolkit supports a set of programming and communication abstractions that enable the construction of both mobile-transparent and mobile-aware applications. Using the Rover abstractions, applications obtain increased availability, concurrency, resource allocation e ciency, fault tolerance, consistency, and adaptation. Experimental evaluation of a suite of mobile applications built with the toolkit demonstrates that such application-level control can be obtained with relatively little programming overhead and allows correct operation, increases interactive performance, and dramatically reduces network utilization under intermittently connected conditions. I.

In heterogeneous environments with performance variations present, multiple applications compete and share a limited amount of system resources, and su#er from variations in resource availability. These complex applications are desired to adapt themselves and to adjust their resource demands dynamically. On one hand, current adaptation mechanisms built within an application cannot preserve global properties such as fairness; on the other hand, adaptive resource management mechanisms built within the operating system are not aware of data semantics in the application. In this paper, we present a novel Middleware Control Framework to enhance the e#ectiveness of QoS adaptation decisions by dynamic control and reconfiguration of internal parameters and functionalities of a distributed multimedia application. Our objective is to satisfy both system-wide properties (such as fairness among concurrent applications) and application-specific requirements (such as preserving the critical performance criteria). The framework is modeled by the Task Control Model and the Fuzzy Control Model, based on rigorous results from the control theory, and verified by the controllability and adaptivity of a distributed visual tracking application. The results show validation of the framework, i.e., critical application quality parameter can be preserved via controlled adaptation.

Power consumption is the limiting factor for the functionality of future wearable devices. Since interactive applications like wireless information access generate bursts of activities, it is important to match the performance of the wearable device accordingly. This paper describes a system with a microprocessor whose speed can be varied (frequency scaling) as well as its input voltage. Voltage scaling is important for reducing power consumption to very low values when operating at low speeds. Measurements show that the energy per instruction at minimal speed (59 MHz) is 1/5 of the energy required at full speed (251 MHz). The frequency and voltage can be scaled dynamically from user space in only 140 ¡ s. This allows power-aware applications to quickly adjust the performance level of the processor whenever the workload changes. 1