A Task Graph Based Application Framework for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Abstract – We propose a task graph based framework for modeling and execution of distributed applications in mobile ad hoc networks. Our framework represents a distributed application by a graph composed of nodes and edges in which the nodes logically represent application subtasks that need to be completed and the edges represent associations, with certain attributes, between nodes. During application run-time, suitable devices that can complete the sub-tasks and can satisfy the attributes of the associations between them are selected on-the-fly to execute the application. New devices are selected to continue application execution if old devices become unavailable due to mobility. Thus, we de-couple the application from a specific set of devices and allow its execution if there is at least one suitable device in the network for carrying out each of the required sub-tasks. In this paper, we propose an application execution protocol to realize this vision and show simulation results which indicate that our approach is practical for environments with low user/device mobility