PACE - Protocols for Adhoc Collaborative Environments

Project Dates: From November 2002 to October 2005

Project Leader: Dr. Paul Ezhilchelvan

Staff: Prof. Isi Mitrani, Prof. Santosh Shrivastava, Dr. Lindsay Marshall

Sponsors: EPSRC

The class of problems addressed by the project is concerned with the development of lightweight middleware protocols of affordable message overhead, which can support collaboration among mobile users over an ad-hoc network.

The assertion that lies behind this proposed work is three-fold:

• The availability of a suite of middleware protocols simplifies the development of collaborative applications.
• Since the topology of an ad-hoc mobile network is not static, at least the services of a group membership protocol would be essential.
• Existing middleware protocols have been developed mainly for two types of (wired) network models. Based on our experience with both of them, neither is appropriate for an ad-hoc mobile network.

The proposed research will develop a message communication model that accurately captures the characteristics of ad-hoc networks. It will combine the best aspects of both the known models and seek to avoid the worst of either. It will then design and implement middleware protocols, and evaluate their robustness against known group mobility models.