CAREER: MultiAgent Systems to Support Mobile Information Access

本研究的目标是提供从移动的、无线连接的系统对网络计算和信息资源的无缝访问。这些系统将成为国家信息基础设施的一个组成部分。在移动的平台上构建这种无处不在的接入系统的一些当前障碍包括它们有限的计算能力、磁盘、电池寿命等，以及无线网络的有限和可变带宽。此外，下一代无线电通信硬件将产生当前基于代理的移动的接入模型不能处理的ad-hoc网络。在这项研究中的方法是创建面向代理的中间件，它克服了移动的主机以及无线网络的局限性，并有助于将它们集成到高性能的计算机和通信系统，形成骨干的NII。中间件对（多媒体）数据流进行代码转换以实现弱连接访问，并集成基于软件组件的系统以向移动的主机提供计算能力。这允许系统从可用数据创建信息以响应查询，这在查询在非平凡领域（例如，科学信息、电子商务）中时是有用的。此外，该系统提供了断开管理，并集成了协同信息过滤技术。该系统支持基于代理和端-端的数据管理方法和它们的相对效率进行了比较。预计这项工作将导致软件系统的开发，需要支持移动的信息访问复杂的，真实的世界的应用，并允许NII处理的多样性的规模由移动的客户端连接到高带宽的网络骨干和强大的服务器的低带宽无线（ad-hoc）网络。这项建议的教育部分有两个方面。一个侧重于在拟议的研究工作领域开设课程，并培训本科生和研究生。另一个是利用拟议的研究，为科学和工程教育创建自适应电子笔记本，使用（现有）课件，数字图书馆和其他数据存储库。预计电子笔记本软件将用于非传统的学生在继续教育计划谁使用低带宽拨号或无线连接。http://www.cs.umbc.edu/~ajoshi/career/

The goal of this research is to provide seamless access to the networked computational and information resources from mobile, wirelessly connected systems. Such systems will be an integral component of the National Information Infrastructure (NII). Some of the current obstacles in building such a ubiquitous access system on mobile platforms include their limited compute power, disks, battery life etc., as well as the limited and variable bandwidth of the wireless networks. Moreover, the next generation of radio communication hardware will engender ad-hoc networks which current proxy based mobile access models cannot handle. The approach in this research is to create agent oriented middleware which overcomes the limitations of the mobile hosts as well as wireless networks, and helps integrate them into the high performance computer and communication systems that form the backbone of the NII. The middleware transcodes (multimedia) data streams to enable weakly connected access, and integrates software component based systems to provide computational power to mobile hosts. This allows the systems to create information from available data to respond to queries, which is useful when the queries are in non-trivial domains (e.g. scientific information, electronic commerce). Moreover, the system provides disconnection management, and integrates techniques for cooperative information filtering. The system supports both proxy based and end-end data management approaches and their relative efficacy is compared. It is expected that this work will lead to the development of software systems needed to support mobile information access in complex, real world applications, and allow the NII to handle the diversity of scale presented by mobile clients connected over low bandwidth wireless (ad-hoc) networks to the high bandwidth network backbone and powerful servers. The educational component of this proposal has two aspects. One focuses on creating courses in the area of the proposed research work and training undergraduate and graduate students. The other leverages the proposed research to create adaptive electronic notebooks for science and engineering education which use (existing) courseware, digital libraries and other data repositories. It is expected that the electronic notebook software will be used by non-traditional students in continuing education programs who use low bandwidth dial-in or wireless connections. http://www.cs.umbc.edu/~ajoshi/career/