Context-Aware Middleware for Reliable Multi-hop Multi-path Connectivity

The widespread diffusion of portable devices with multiple wireless interfaces, e.g., UMTS/GPRS, IEEE 802.11, and/or Bluetooth, is enabling multi-homing and multi-channel scenarios, possibly made up by multi-hop cooperative paths towards the traditional Internet infrastructure. There is the need for novel middleware supports, aware of innovative context information, to select and dynamically re-configure the most suitable interfaces and connectivity providers for each client application. In particular, novel middlewares should effectively exploit concise and lightweight context indicators about expected node mobility, path throughput, and energy availability to take proper connectivity management decisions at session startup and to promptly re-configure them with limited overhead at runtime. Here, we present how our MMHC middleware originally uses mobility/throughput/energy context to manage connectivity opportunities effectively, i) by filtering out connectivity opportunities that are considered insufficiently reliable, and ii) by carefully evaluating the residual candidates in two distinguished local/global management phases to achieve the most suitable tradeoff between promptness and management costs.