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GUEST EDITORIAL
COMMUNICATIONS MIDDLEWARE FOR MOBILE DEVICES AND APPLICATIONS
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dvances in device miniaturization, wireless communications, and the ubiquitous availability of sensors and computing/memory resources are enabling complex mobility-enhanced services. However, realizing the full vision of ubiquitous, pervasive, and transparent computing requires addressing a set of technical challenges to construct the next generation of mobile middleware to allow the development, deployment, and runtime management of mobile applications that adapt to their changing execution environments. This feature topic was prompted by this vision and by our belief that there is a strong need to work on (and give visibility to) novel approaches to mobile middleware that address changing connectivity levels, while exploiting location, mobility patterns, and other context-dependent features to provide a new class of enhanced mobile services and applications. In particular, we believe there is a need for innovative research that focuses on issues of scalability and interoperability in open widescale deployment environments; this is crucial for the effective realization of next-generation mobile applications. The articles in this feature topic present a step in this direction; in particular, they provide a fresh snapshot of the current state of the art in middleware architectures, mechanisms, algorithms, and integrated frameworks for future mobile platforms and services. After a rigorous and selective review process, we are happy to include four excellent articles that cover the different subareas and abstraction layers that are emerging in the area of mobile middleware research. The first article, “Generic Interface Architecture supporting Cognitive Resource Management in Future Wireless Networks,” proposes a solution to target the fragmentation issue associated with the proliferation of different application programming interfaces (APIs) to control and manage the heterogeneous wireless interfaces that are becoming increasingly predominant in mobile devices. The authors propose not only a generic architecture and an implemented framework, but also show how the availability of their “low-layer” middleware can relevantly reduce the costs of application development and deployment. The second article addresses the significant issue of interoperability in future wireless networks. “Using an Open Source IEEE 802.21 Implementation for NetworkBased Localized Mobility Management” presents design and implementation experiences in developing a middleware framework, ODTONE, for effective and standardsbased mobility/handover management. ODTONE implements the recent IEEE 802.21 standard in an operating-system-independent way and is available as an open source prototype, and can be useful for the mobile mid-
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dleware community as a starting basis for open, easily deployable, and more sophisticated mobility management solutions. At a higher layer of abstraction, the article entitled “Publish-Subscribe Delay-Tolerant Message-Oriented Middleware for Resilient Communication” proposes the synergic exploitation of publish/subscribe message oriented middleware and delay-tolerant networking for increasing application resilience over heterogeneous wireless networks. The authors describe the implementation of their mobile middleware solution for the Android platform, and show how it can enable seamless and energy-efficient communications at the application layer despite temporary absences in end-to-end connectivity. The fourth article, entitled “A Context Realization Framework for Ubiquitous Applications with Runtime Support,” addresses the well recognized challenge of developing effective and context-aware middleware for mobile applications. The authors propose a novel middleware framework that aims to provide support for application developers in the definition of constraints for the execution of context-related tasks. The reported experimental results show that the middleware overhead is limited and well compensated by the advantages in terms of reduction of application development/deployment costs and time. We would like to take this opportunity to express our gratitude to all the authors who submitted their recent research results in response to our call and to all the reviewers who helped us during the review process by providing relevant and thorough feedback. Their active participation was crucial to ensuring the novelty, technical quality, and depth of this feature topic. Our thanks also go to the Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Steve Gorshe, who trusted us, supported the idea of this feature topic, and gave us very prompt suggestions and assistance during the process of our preparation. We hope that this collection of articles will provide readers with a broad perspective of the current state of the art in mobile middleware and stimulate further research in this challenging area. Happy reading!
BIOGRAPHIES G URUDUTH S. B ANAVAR (
[email protected]) is vice president and chief technology officer of the Global Public Sector in IBM. In this role, he is responsible for providing technical leadership across the public sector, with a particular focus on IBM’s Smarter Cities initiatives to capture strategic opportunities, improve on solutions, harvest core assets, and maintain a vital link to IBM Research. Previously, he was the director of IBM Research in India, one of eight laboratories of the world-leading IBM Research Division. Earlier, he was at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center in New York, which he joined in 1995 after his Ph.D. His broad technical interests and contributions have been in service science, pervasive computing, distributed systems, and programming mod-
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IEEE Communications Magazine • September 2011
LYT-GUEST EDIT-Bellavista
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GUEST EDITORIAL (Continued from page 100) els. He has published more than 40 research papers in top international forums, invented more than 25 U.S. patents, chaired major international technical conferences and workshops in his research areas, and served on Ph.D. committees in major U.S. universities. PAOLO BELLAVISTA [SM] (
[email protected]) is an associate professor of computer engineering at the University of Bologna, where he received his Laurea degree and Ph.D. He is a senior member of the ACM, and serves on the Editorial Boards of IEEE Communications Magazine, IEEE Transactions on Computers, IEEE Transactions on Network and Systems Management, IEEE Transactions on Services Computing, Springer Journal of Network and Systems Management, and Elsevier Journal of Pervasive and Mobile Computing. His research activities span from mobile computing to mobile agent-based middlewares, from pervasive wireless computing to location/context-aware services, from vehicular/sensor wireless ad hoc networks to adaptive multimedia. Additional information can be found at http://lia.deis.unibo.it/Staff/PaoloBellavista/ R AVI K OTHARI (
[email protected]) is an IBM Distinguished Engineer and presently plays a dual role — as associate director of IBM Research India and as IBM chief architect of the Bharti Account (Bharti-Aritel is a
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full service telecom provider with operations in India, Africa, and other countries). Prior to joining IBM, he was a tenured associate professor at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio, and director of the Artificial Neural Systems Laboratory. He has served as an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, and Pattern Analysis and Applications (Springer), as well as on the program committees of various conferences. He is a member of the IBM Academy of Technology and serves on its Technical Council. He was a recipient of the 2008 Gerstner Award for Client Excellence at IBM — one of IBM’s most prestigious awards. NALINI VENKATASUBRAMANIAN [M] (
[email protected]) is currently a professor in the School of Information and Computer Science at the University of California, Irvine. She has had significant research and industry experience in the areas of distributed systems, adaptive middleware, mobile computing, distributed multimedia servers, formal methods, and objectoriented databases. She is the recipient of the prestigious U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Career award in 1999, an Undergraduate Teaching Excellence award from the University of California, Irvine in 2002 and multiple best paper awards. She is a member of the ACM, and has served extensively editorial boards of journals and committees of conferences in the areas of middleware, distributed systems, and multimedia. Prior to arriving at UC Irvine, she was a research staff member at the Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Palo Alto, California.
IEEE Communications Magazine • September 2011
