Software Architectures

Abstract

The mobile computing environment is constrained in many ways. Mobile elements themselves are resource-poor and unreliable. Their network connectivity is often achieved through low-bandwidth wireless links. Furthermore, connectivity is frequently lost for variant periods of time. The difficulties raised by these constraints are compounded by mobility that induces variability in the availability of both communication and computational resources. These severe restrictions have a great impact on the design and structure of mobile computing applications and motivate the development of new computing models. These mobile computing models must provide efficient access to both existing and new applications which is a key requirement for the wide acceptance of mobile computing.