A Fresh Look At Low-Power Mobile Computing

We challenge the apparent consensus that next-generation mobile devices must necessarily provide resource-intensive capabilities such as on-device Java implementations to support advanced applications. Instead, we propose an architecture that exploits the high “last mile” bandwidth in third generation wireless networks to enable the largest part of such applications to run inside a base station, effectively reducing the mobile device to a dumb terminal. We discuss some implications of this architecture, with respect to hand-off, confidentiality while roaming in potentially hostile networks, and the need for a server-transparent segmentation of applications into a computational and a user interface component.