CAREER: MultiAgent Systems to Support Mobile Information Access

这项研究的目标是从移动、无线连接的系统中提供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（NII）的组成部分。目前在移动平台上建立这样一个无处不在的访问系统的一些障碍包括其有限的计算能力、磁盘、电池寿命等，以及无线网络有限和可变的带宽。此外，下一代无线电通信硬件将产生当前基于代理的移动接入模型无法处理的自组织网络。本研究的方法是创建面向代理的中间件，克服移动主机和无线网络的局限性，并将它们集成到高性能的计算机和通信系统中，形成NII的骨干。中间件对（多媒体）数据流进行转码，以实现弱连接访问，并集成基于软件组件的系统，为移动主机提供计算能力。这允许系统从可用数据中创建信息来响应查询，这在查询是非平凡领域（例如科学信息、电子商务）时非常有用。此外，系统还提供了断连管理，并集成了协同信息过滤技术。系统支持基于代理的数据管理和端到端数据管理两种方式，并比较了两种方式的相对效果。预计这项工作将导致软件系统的开发，以支持复杂的、真实世界的应用程序中的移动信息访问，并允许NII处理通过低带宽无线（自组织）网络连接到高带宽网络骨干和功能强大的服务器的移动客户端所呈现的规模多样性。这一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，培养本科生和研究生。另一个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（现有的）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被继续教育课程中使用低带宽拨号或无线连接的非传统学生使用。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/