An integrated personal mobility services architecture

Next generation network computing systems are expected to provide a wide variety of Personal Mobility Services to users anytime, via a range of devices and anywhere in the world. Personal Mobility Services require an advanced architecture that integrates supported protocols, mechanisms and specialised functions to dynamically reconfigure applications. It should also integrate services that can accommodate environmental changes as the user roams from one location to another. Personal Mobility also has to deal with various Information Spaces where information is not just coming from the Internet but also from other nearby equipments and the environment around them. In a next generation network, Information and services should be available to mobile users in the same analogy as high street shopping. Our research introduces an architecture that allows user nodes to perform specific tasks by operating as a centric-composer of the available services from both the local environment and the infrastructure network. The proposed Integrated Personal Mobility Services Architecture (IPMSA) incorporates a framework where the entire wireless nodes are in the same network and only one hop away from the public access point. For those one world wireless requirements, we implemented a Global Wireless Framework to complete the vision of IPMSA architecture. The IPMSA architecture will enable application on a network node in the Global Wireless Framework to use/provide services across the infrastructure network in a seamless manner. In this global wireless network mobile devices need to communicate in an ad hoc manner and have the ability to perform Layer 2 multi-hop coordination. However, current protocol specifications including IEEE802.11 lack a definition of multi-hop support. This constitutes a challenge for the delivery and sharing of services in the integrated framework. We proposed a GWF Ad Hoc Bridge to allow clients in the Global Wireless Framework to provide multihop communication links to other nodes in the network. This extends the node communication range and provides more services accordingly. We implemented our GWF Ad Hoc Bridge in the NS-2 network simulator to evaluate the performance of the Global Wireless Framework multi-hop communication. We also compare the performance of our bridge with the existing Ad Hoc routing protocols to get a better view of this novel approach. The services composition prototype that we also implemented proves that the concept of service integration provide better range of services in an interoperable heterogeneous domain. Joining these two concepts allows services to be offered from both the infrastructure network side and the local environment. In our future work, intelligent services composition and assistance mechanisms would be integrated to make applications built on this architecture more adaptable to the mobile user lifestyle.