Supporting Mobile Multimedia Services with Intermittently Available Grid Resources

Advances in high quality digital wireless networks and differentiated services have enabled the development of mobile multimedia applications that can execute in global infrastructures. In this paper, we introduce a novel approach to supporting mobile multimedia services by effectively exploiting the intermittently available idle computing, storage and communication resources in a Grid infrastructure. Specifically, we develop efficient resource discovery policies that can ensure continuous access to information sources and maintain application Quality-of-Service (QoS) requirements, e.g. required network transmission bandwidth on the mobile clients. Our performance studies indicate that mobility patterns obtained via tracking or user-supplied itineraries assist in optimizing resource allocation. The proposed policies are also resilient to dynamic changes in the availability of grid resources.