An architecture for adaptive mobile applications

TLDR: The components of a flexible and general-purpose runtime infrastructure to facilitate the rapid development and deployment of adaptive mobile applications that adapt dynamically and transparently to the amount of resources available at runtime are developed.

Abstract: Mobile applications execute in an environment characterized by scarce and dynamically varying resources. We believe that applications have to adapt dynamically and transparently to the amount of resources available at runtime. To achieve this goal, we use the conventional extension of the clientserver model to a client-proxy-server model. The mobile devices execute the client, which provides the user interface and some part of the application logic. The proxy is a component of the application that executes in the wired network to support the client. As the user moves, the proxy may also move to remain on the communication path from the mobile device to a fixed correspondent host. Logically, the proxy hides the “mobile” client from the server, who thinks it communicates with a standard client (i.e., a client that executes on a powerful desktop directly connected to the wired network). The new contribution of our research lies in the division of labor between client and proxy. The application logic of the “standard client” is split dynamically between the mobile client and the proxy, using mobile code, to adapt to the dynamic wireless environment and to address the limitations of the portable device. Using mobile code allows us to experiment with different adaptation strategies and to explore resource tradeoffs in a unified framework. We are developing the components of a flexible and general-purpose runtime infrastructure to facilitate the rapid development and deployment of such adaptive mobile applications. We will evaluate our infrastructure by implementing a number of wireless applications and by building simulation tools to validate the scalability of our architecture when considering metropolitan and provincial cellular systems. The simulations will be driven by trace data that we are collecting in cooperation with a Canadian cellular service provider.