Mobile Peer-to-peer Collaborative Framework and Applications

This chapter describes the Peer2Me mobile peer-to-peer framework, Peer2Me applications, and experiences from using the Peer2Me framework. Peer2Me supports mobile collaboration utilizing Bluetooth and Java ME. The framework runs on standard Java ME-enabled mobile phones and it enables rapid development of various kinds of collaborative peer-to-peer applications. In the chapter we describe some of these applications as well as experiences from implementing these peer-to-peer applications: a file-sharing application, a chat application, a quiz game, a face-to-face meeting scheduler, a real-time game, an automatic business exchange application, and a find the right person application. All these applications have been analysed to discover limitations of the framework, limitations of the technology and the potential usefulness. Finally, the analysis is summarised to give a more complete picture of the potential and the limitations of using Bluetooth and Java ME to implement mobile peer-to-peer applications. INTRODUCTION Most peer-to-peer applications and architectures today are designed to work in a fixed and wired infrastructure like the Internet. The development of wireless network technologies, mobile devices and programming environment for mobile devices have made it possible to migrate the peer-to-peer computing to a wireless environment (Kortuem et al., 2001) (Maibaum & Mundt, 2002). The downside of bringing peer-to-peer computing to the mobile and wireless platform is that we have to face the classical challenges of mobile computing related to how to handle wireless communication, how to solve issues related to mobility of the user, and how to overcome the limitations introduced by the portability of the mobile device (Satyanarayanan, 1996). Mobile peer-to-peer computing also offers new opportunities that can be utilized like providing location-based services (Davies et al., 2001) (Long et al. 1996) and social computing (Eagle & Pentland, 2005) (Holmquist et al., 1998) using short-range networks. Most wireless devices support some kind of personal area network (PAN) technologies like irDA and/or Bluetooth (Miller & Bisdikian, 2004). PANs are commonly used for transferring data between two mobile devices. A PAN can be seen as a digital sphere around the mobile device enabling a collaborative network for users within range. The digital sphere opens for mobile computer supported cooperative work (mobile CSCW) (Wiberg & Grönlund, 2000), (Papadopoulos, 2006). In such environments, the support for mobile peer-to-peer is essential, and the support and establishment of mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) are necessary. A MANET is a self-configuring network where peers can join and leave the network dynamically making the …