MobiLoc-An Extrinsic Reflection Driven Middleware for Mobile Location Awareness

Abstract

Mobility, which is becoming an unavoidable part of today’s life, brings with it the need for a new class of applications that have the knowledge of their rapidly changing surroundings. This feature is called context awareness. Locationawareness is the most vital part of context awareness. Future mobile applications require highly dynamic and adaptive services from the middleware components i.e. location awareness. This aspect has not been considered much to provide a standard framework for location aware component development. Existing location aware application development is strictly domain dependant and location-sensing technology centric. It is needed that component technology must be enhanced to provide support for location awareness to mobile applications for adapting their behaviors accordingly. Traditional middleware, based on component technology, have also not addressed this emerging need of these wide ranges of applications. This research integrates component technology with the proposed Extrinsic-Meta Object Protocols abbreviated as Extrinsic-MOP in Location-driven Reflectivemiddleware for mobile Applications. It is achieved through Meta Object Protocols for supporting development of location aware applications It specializes the concept of Meta Object Protocols in two aspects: firstly by extending it to provide the state of the object that is not inside the object (extrinsic), secondly by providing a standard framework for developing location aware components. Extrinsic-MOP framework is domain and technology independent for location aware component development. It proved to be a very simple and powerful way to programmatically develop location-driven applications based on autonomic components.