ITR: System Support for Mobile Multimedia and Web Applications

University Of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst MA

Investigators

Abstract

The growing popularity of mobile devices with wireless capabilities imposes new and fundamental challenges in extending the capabilities of wired Internet applications to the wireless domain. This project will investigate proxy-based techniques for enabling the next generation of mobile multimedia and web applications. The proposed research will focus on three characteristics of mobile environments, namely client mobility, intermittent connectivity, and resource-poor nature of mobile devices. Research issues that will be addressed in this project include (i) power-friendly streaming techniques and real-time handoffs for mobile multimedia applications, and (ii) caching and dissemination of time-varying and location-dependent data accessed by mobile web applications. The proposed techniques will be evaluated using an eclectic mix of simulation, analysis and prototype implementation. The significance of the proposed research arises from the widespread and growing use of mobile devices that provide ubiquitous, wireless access to data on the Internet. The likely impact of this research will be to advance the state of the art in proxy-based infrastructures for next-generation mobile multimedia and web applications.