Composition of Mobile Computing and Pervasive Computing

Composition of Mobile Computing with Pervasive Computing

The birth of mobile and pervasive computing take place in 1988 and we discussed the concepts which paved the way for universal computing.

So firstly we understand the ideal platforms for deploying pervasive computing.  Make it clear that there are 4 constraints for an ideal environment and platform

Omnipresence: It must be available where a human can go or human may require the technology.

2.      Embed-ability: The technology can easily embed into our daily life

3.      Execution in background: The technology should be so simple and smaller in size that user should not notice it frequently or user intervention is required again and again.

4.      Accessibility

    The technology should be available to everybody. It should not only be useable by the studious persons only. They are to be commercialize in a way to it becomes easily accessible.

    The projected figures of the sale of cell phones, smart phone, laptops, other gadgets are considered and to analyzed that which type of devices should be more suitable for pervasive computing.

    Consequently we noticed that cell phones are such suitable devices which may be used as platform or component of pervasive computing and pervasive environment. 

    The sale of cellphone captured the major market share. Then smart phones and then laptops are considered suitable. So we can decide that cell phone, smartphone and laptops are very large in number in terms of sale to we can deploy our pervasive system.

    

    So if we decide to start developing any technology and the technology is available so we can deploy that technology using cellphones and then we can deploy the same or updated technology on other versions of devices like smartphone, laptops and other wearable computing devices.

    At this stage we have to decide that weather the single type of technology or pervasive environment would be suitable for the devices in a row but the answer would be no as all the devices have their own characteristics and brand specifications.

    What are the Scenarios of pervasive computing?

    While considering the scenarios we can relate it with a software engineering example. The list of use case suggests us what kind of actions or transactions can be carried out using that software. The software would be able to carry out these tasks which are pictorially depicted through these use cases. So we start developing the software application for these use cases.

Similarly few scenarios are defined for pervasive computing.

Firstly we used an example of collecting information from various computers and proactively suggested the improvements in user experience. Usability and user experience.

Similarly we are trying to send some data and there is congestion in the internet provided in the        environment through Wi-Fi.  So the pervasive system will check all the Wi-Fi and keeping in your    schedule it will suggest you that after few minute walk there is a Wi-Fi connection suitable for the    amount of data you are going to transfer.

Metro train announces that a certain location is ahead and we would reach at that station in 10 minutes. So get ready. Doors are installed at both sides of train and only that doors will be opened which are face towards the linked passages and terminals. How many of the passengers will leave the train and seats will be available.

a.       The important point to be noted is proactivity. The pervasive system should be proactive to take decisions in advance.

b.      The second most important aspect is self-tuning. When the device is switching from one environment to another environment it must be context aware and can easily adjustable into the 2^nd environment. For example a person is doing some work on desktop and he has to move from his office to meeting room, the current state of the data will be transferred from desktop to laptop or smart phone and while entering to the meeting room that data will be linked to the computer connected with the projector.

Another aspect is distributed computing

The idea of distributed computing is to broaden the working environment of a desktop computer, a desktop computer which is connected with LAN has several limitations. So the idea of distributed computing is to perform the same but using several computers. Which minimizes the limitation of work done within a single room and single computer.

Remote computing

If a person has to communicate remotely from outside the country and the intervention of the user is essentially required, so remote communication and remote communication protocols and layering, remote procedure calls, the use of timeouts, end to end arguments are required to be successful completion of functionality.

Fault tolerance

Including atomic transactions, distributed and nested transactions and two phase commits are required to be devised. In such a situation we are using 2 or 3 computers in order to perform a task and what else if one of these computers fails and stopped working. This might be operating system crash, hard-disk crash, power failure can be occur. All these computers are not in a single place or under your direct control.

High availability

Including optimistic and pessimistic replica control, mirrored execution and optimistic recovery. Faults can occur for any reason, so they are to be controlled in such a way that the down time should be zero or minimal. The frequency of occurrence for the same reason must be controlled.

Remote Information access

Another important aspect is retrieving the information remotely. Actually information is distributed including caching, remote database access, function shipping, distributed file system and distributed databases as well. All of them give us some illusion that the information and data is actually residing on your local computer. We simply click and data is readily available. It happens as simple as the information is being processed on your own computer. But in reality, in background the data is coming from remote locations connected through network channels, internet etc.

Security is the most essential aspect while we are designing a system where information is distributed at different places and on different computers.  So many people will be able to accessing the information. How would we able to secure that our private data will remain private. So security measures came from distributed computing. These measures are designed in such a way that data will be remaining consistent, updated and concurrently accessible for all the users from distant places. These measures are encryption based mutual authentication and privacy.