Supporting Collaborative Behavior in MANETs using Workflows

Groupware activities provide a powerful representation for many collaborative tasks. Today, the technologies that support typical groupware applications often assume a stable wired network infrastructure. The potential for collaboration in scenarios that lack this fixed infrastructure remains largely untapped. Such scenarios include activities on construction sites, wilderness exploration, disaster recovery, and rapid intervention teams. Communication in these scenarios can be supported using wireless ad hoc networks, an emerging technology whose full potential is yet to be understood and realized. In this paper, we consider the fundamental technical issues that need to be addressed in order to introduce groupware concepts into mobile ad hoc networks. Starting with a simple workflow model, we examine the process of allocating its actions to physically-mobile agents in a manner that accommodates transient communication and runtime errors. Type of Report: Other Department of Computer Science & Engineering Washington University in St. Louis Campus Box 1045 St. Louis, MO 63130 ph: (314) 935-6160 Supporting Collaborative Behavior in MANETs using Workflows Rohan Sen, Gregory Hackmann, Mart Haitjema, Gruia-Catalin Roman, and Christopher Gill Department of Computer Science and Engineering Washington University in St. Louis Campus Box 1045, One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO 63130, U.S.A. {rohan.sen, ghackmann, mart.haitjema, roman, cdgill}@wustl.edu