Enabling Cross-Technology Mobile Applications with Network-Aware References

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Publication Type:

Book Chapter

Authors:

Kevin Pinte; Dries Harnie; Theo D’Hondt

Source:

Coordination Models and Languages, Springer Berlin Heidelberg, Volume 6721, p.142-156 (2011)

ISBN:

978-3-642-21463-9

URL:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-21464-6_10

Keywords:

Bluetooth, distributed programming, mobile applications, multi-networking, Network-awareness, Wi-Fi

Abstract:

Mobile devices, such as smart phones, have become ubiquitous. This evolution has given rise to a vast ecosystem of mobile applications. Typically these applications only use a small subset of the networking technologies at their disposal. Building applications that use multiple networking technologies simultaneously or exploit knowledge about the available connections is a laborious task. Programmers must manually keep track of the connectivity state and duplicate communication code per connection type. This paper presents network-aware references, a distributed object-oriented programming abstraction that eases multi-networking for mobile applications and allows programmers to react to changes in the connectivity of different networks around them. We show how network-aware references are implemented and evaluate how well they switch between technologies.