MobiShare: sharing context-dependent data & services from mobile sources

Abstract

The rapid advances in wireless communications technology and mobile computing have enabled personal mobile devices that we use in everyday life to become information and service providers by complementing or replacing fixed-location hosts connected to the wireline network. Such mobile resources is highly important for other moving users, creating significant opportunities for many interesting and novel applications. The MobiShare architecture provides the infrastructure for ubiquitous mobile access and mechanisms for publishing, discovering and accessing heterogeneous mobile resources in a large area, taking into account the context of both sources and requestors. Any wireless communication technology could be used between a device and the system. Furthermore, the use of XML-related languages and protocols for describing and exchanging metadata gives the system a uniform and easily adaptable interface, allowing a variety of devices to use it. The overall approach is data-centric and service-oriented, implying that all devices are treated as producers or requestors of data wrapped as information services.