Abstract

Recent advances in wireless networking technologies and the growing success of mobile computing devices, such as laptop computers, third generation mobile phones, personal digital assistants, watches and the like, are enabling new classes of applications that present challenging problems to designers. Mobile devices face temporary loss of network connectivity when they move; they are likely to have scarce resources, such as low battery power, slow CPU speed and little memory; they are required to react to frequent and unannounced changes in the environment, such as high variability of network bandwidth, and in the resources availability. To support designers building mobile applications, research in the field of middleware systems has proliferated. Middleware aims at facilitating communication and coordination of distributed components, concealing complexity raised by mobility from application engineers as much as possible. In this survey, we examine characteristics of mobile distributed systems and distinguish them from their fixed counterpart.

Citations