Mobile services: context-aware service migration in ad hoc networks

Abstract

Short-range wireless technology is on its way of becoming ubiquitous, and it will soon be possible to program real world ad hoc networks. Deploying services in such networks, however, is constrained by the lack of proper service models and system support. This paper presents mobile services, a context-aware service model that addresses the highly dynamic configurations and rapidly changing contexts encountered in ad hoc networks. Unlike a statically identified service that is always located on the same node, a mobile service can migrate to different nodes in the network to accomplish its task. The service migration occurs transparently to the client application, which is presented with a unique virtual service end-point. We designed and implemented a middleware for developing mobile services. We built a proof-of-concept mobile service that dynamically computes the average vehicular speed in a region ahead of a given car by using only car-to-car short-range wireless communication. The experimental results obtained over a mobile ad hoc network of PDAs show the effectiveness of our approach in the presence of frequent disconnections. We also present simulation results that demonstrate the benefits of mobile services in large scale networks compared to statically centralized approaches.