Abstract — Today’s mobile applications require constant adaptation to their changing environments, or contexts. Technological advancements have increased the pervasiveness of mobile computing devices such as laptops, handhelds, and embedded sensors. The sheer amount of context information available for adaptation places a heightened burden on application developers as they must manage and utilize vast amounts of data from diverse sources. Facilitating programming in this datarich environment requires a middleware that provides context information to applications in an abstract form. In this paper, we demonstrate the feasibility of such a middleware that allows programmers to focus on high-level interactions among programs and to employ declarative abstract specifications of context in settings that exhibit transient interactions with opportunistically encountered components. We also discuss the novel context-aware abstractions the middleware provides and the programming knowledge necessary to write applications using our middleware. Finally, we provide examples demonstrating the flexibility of the infrastructure and its ability to support differing tasks from a wide variety of application domains. I.

Abstract — This work addresses the need for application-aware adaptive communication in mobile ad hoc networks that creates network routes based on applications ’ dynamic resource requests. We introduce an intuitive generalization to source routing which facilitates discovery of a resource in a mobile ad hoc network and the creation and maintenance of a route from the requesting host to the discovered destination. We thus eliminate the requirement that existing routing protocols be coupled with a name or resource resolution protocol, instead favoring an entirely reactive approach to accommodate significant degrees of mobility and uncertainty. We also present a performance evaluation and a comparison to existing alternatives. I.

Abstract — Context-aware computing is characterized by software’s ability to continuously adapt its behavior to an environment over which it has little control. This style of interaction is imperative in ad hoc mobile networks that consist of numerous mobile hosts coordinating opportunistically via transient wireless connections. In this paper, we provide a formal abstract characterization of an application’s context that extends to encompass a neighborhood within the ad hoc network. We provide a context specification mechanism that allows individual applications to tailor their operating contexts to their personalized needs. We describe a context maintenance protocol that provides this context abstraction in ad hoc networks through continuous evaluation of the context. This relieves the application developer of the obligation of explicitly managing mobility and its implications on behavior. We also characterize the performance of this protocol in ad hoc networks through simulation experiments. Finally, we examine real world application examples demonstrating its use. I.

Mobile ad-hoc networks propose new challenges for software development and verification and validation (V&V) activities. Apart from the issues found in fixed distributed systems, fresh ones are presented in the new environment: high dynamicity or context awareness. New nodes are constantly joining and leaving, the application running on the host has to be aware of these changes. Nodes are

Dewayne E PerryFor everyone who helped me along the way. Acknowledgments Throughout my educational career there have been many important people. I would like to thank the special professors who inspired me to pursue my education: Dewayne E Perry, F.X. Bostick, Mack Grady, and Sarfraz Khurshid. In my two years spent pursuing my MSEE I have been lucky to work in the Mobile and Pervasive Computing group. My peers, Adam Pridgen, Sanem Kabadayi, Raghavan Srinivasan, Drew Stovall, Taesoo Jun, Vasanth Rajamani, and Angela Dalton have been extremely helpful. My advisor, Christine Julien, has also been outstanding. The Mobile and Pervasive Computing lab is a fun, supportive environment that made the M.S. process much easier and more enjoyable. Finally, I mention the generous donors who funded my education with the MCD and Thrust fellowships. Without their support, this would not be possible.