Abstract
Mobile agents have been widely used in distributed computing to take care of the task execution for the user. It is also suitable for mobile and pervasive computing. However, a pervasive computing environment is characterised by high diversity and dynamism, which gives rise to the requirement that a mobile agent executed in such environments has the self-configuring capability. In this paper, we study the problem, when an object providing a service enters the environment, how a mobile agent without prior knowledge about the object can interact with the service. We describe a method for the mobile agent to obtain the corresponding interaction codes and instantiate them for the interaction at runtime with minimal human involvement. We call this component-level self-configuration. Currently, no existing system renders a mobile agent with such capability. We propose a framework, which consists of a unified model for all the participating objects and mechanisms for a mobile agent to dynamically obtain interaction code and self-configuring it for execution. A prototype platform has been implemented and a preliminary performance study has also been carried out. Our experimental results show that the overhead caused by the component-level self-configuration is acceptable.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 223-238 |
Number of pages | 16 |
Journal | International Journal of Parallel, Emergent and Distributed Systems |
Volume | 26 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Jun 2011 |
Keywords
- mobile agent
- mobile code
- pervasive computing middleware
- self-configuration
- spontaneous interaction
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Software
- Computer Networks and Communications