Reactive Framework for Resource Aware Distributed Computing

Abstract

Rapid strides in technology have lead to pervasive computing in a spectrum of applications such as crisis management systems, distributed critical systems, medical therapy systems, home entertainment etc. One of the common features in the spectrum of applications has been the reactivity of the systems and context of the environments. The environmental context has become highly sophisticated due to rapid advances in sensor technology and deployment. In this paper, we propose a reactive framework to enable the development of pervasive computing applications for different context environments. One of the novelties has been to use contexts as observables between components. Some of the context features that are observable are: the classical communications, termination, clock-time, suspension of actions based on presence or absence of signals, location, resource parameters, etc. The new observables provide a framework for the development of appropriate flexible middleware for a spectrum of applications. Further, it leads to the development of an implementational model for a spectrum of applications that can be effectively hooked onto available component implementations with appropriate interfaces. The new observables are suspensive in nature with respect to communications and locations and allow to model varieties of distributed applications that include sensor technology, wireless environments etc.

The work was done under grant from NSF (CCR-0098335) and SRC (2003-HJ-1117). Support from Qualcomm and California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology at UCSD is gratefully acknowledged.