Lessons learned from the design of a mobile multimedia system in the Moby Dick project

Recent advances in wireless networking technology and the exponential development of semiconductor technology have engendered a new paradigm of computing, called personal mobile computing or ubiquitous computing. This offers a vision of the future with a much richer and more exciting set of architecture research challenges than extrapolations of the current desktop architectures. In particular, these devices will have limited battery resources, will handle diverse data types, and will operate in environments that are insecure, dynamic and which vary significantly in time and location. The research performed in the MOBY DICK project is about designing such a mobile multimedia system. This paper discusses the approach made in the MOBY DICK project to solve some of these problems, discusses its contributions, and accesses what was learned from the project

Quality assessment technique for ubiquitous software and middleware

The new paradigm of computing or information systems is ubiquitous computing systems. The technology-oriented issues of ubiquitous computing systems have made researchers pay much attention to the feasibility study of the technologies rather than building quality assurance indices or guidelines. In this context, measuring quality is the key to developing high-quality ubiquitous computing products. For this reason, various quality models have been defined, adopted and enhanced over the years, for example, the need for one recognised standard quality model (ISO/IEC 9126) is the result of a consensus for a software quality model on three levels: characteristics, sub-characteristics, and metrics. However, it is very much unlikely that this scheme will be directly applicable to ubiquitous computing environments which are considerably different to conventional software, trailing a big concern which is being given to reformulate existing methods, and especially to elaborate new assessment techniques for ubiquitous computing environments. This paper selects appropriate quality characteristics for the ubiquitous computing environment, which can be used as the quality target for both ubiquitous computing product evaluation processes ad development processes. Further, each of the quality characteristics has been expanded with evaluation questions and metrics, in some cases with measures. In addition, this quality model has been applied to the industrial setting of the ubiquitous computing environment. These have revealed that while the approach was sound, there are some parts to be more developed in the future

The system architecture of the Pocket Companion

In the Moby Dick project we design the architecture of a so-called Pocket Companion. It is a small personal portable computer with wireless communication facilities for every day use. The typical use of the Pocket Companion induces a number of requirements concerning security, performance, energy consumption, communication and size. We have shown that these requirements are interrelated and can only be met optimal with one single architecture. The Pocket Companion architecture consists of a central switch with a security module surrounded by several modules. The Pocket Companion is a personal machine. Communication, and particularly wireless communication, is essential for the system to support electronic transactions. Such a system requires a good security infrastructure not only for safeguarding personal data, but also to allow safe (financial) transactions. The integration of a security module in the Pocket Companion architecture provides the basis for a secure environment.\ud Because battery life is limited and battery weight is an important factor for the size and the weight of the Pocket Companion, energy consumption plays a crucial role in the architecture. An important theme of the architecture is: enough performance for minimal energy consumption

A software definable MIMO testbed: architecture and functionality

Following the intensive theoretical studies of recently emerged MIMO technology, a variety of performance measures become important to investigate the challenges and trade-offs at various levels throughout MIMO system design process. This paper presents a review of the MIMO testbed recently set up at King’s College London. The architecture that distinguishes the testbed as a flexible and reconfigurable system is first preseneted. This includes both the hardware and software aspects, and is followed by a discussion of implementation methods and evaluation of system research capabilities

Building Programmable Wireless Networks: An Architectural Survey

In recent times, there have been a lot of efforts for improving the ossified Internet architecture in a bid to sustain unstinted growth and innovation. A major reason for the perceived architectural ossification is the lack of ability to program the network as a system. This situation has resulted partly from historical decisions in the original Internet design which emphasized decentralized network operations through co-located data and control planes on each network device. The situation for wireless networks is no different resulting in a lot of complexity and a plethora of largely incompatible wireless technologies. The emergence of "programmable wireless networks", that allow greater flexibility, ease of management and configurability, is a step in the right direction to overcome the aforementioned shortcomings of the wireless networks. In this paper, we provide a broad overview of the architectures proposed in literature for building programmable wireless networks focusing primarily on three popular techniques, i.e., software defined networks, cognitive radio networks, and virtualized networks. This survey is a self-contained tutorial on these techniques and its applications. We also discuss the opportunities and challenges in building next-generation programmable wireless networks and identify open research issues and future research directions.Comment: 19 page