Towards fault tolerant pervasive computing

TLDR

Pervasive computing must operate invisibly and sustainably, requiring fault‑resilient devices that automatically adapt to environmental context. The article aims to identify challenges to fault‑tolerant pervasive computing, discuss their implications, and outline potential solutions. It describes how these solutions are implemented in a system that maintains functionality despite faults.

Abstract

Pervasive computing exists in the user's environment, the technology is sustainable if it is invisible to the user and does not intrude the user's consciousness. This requires that functioning of the multitude of devices in the environment be oblivious to the user. Therefore, the system has to be resilient to various kinds of faults and should be able to function despite faults. In addition, pervasive computing provides a platform for context-aware computing that enables automatic configuration of a pervasive system based on the environment context. The aim of this article is to highlight the various challenges and issues that confront fault tolerance pervasive computing, discuss their implications, prevent some solutions to these problems, and describe how some of these solutions are implemented in our system.