ITR: Exploiting Remote Infrastructure for Mobile Information Access

ITR：利用远程基础设施进行移动信息访问

• 批准号: 0081396
• 负责人: Mahadev Satyanarayanan
• 金额: $ 48.88万
• 依托单位: Carnegie-Mellon University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2000
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2000-09-01 至 2005-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0081396&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: ITR; Exploiting; Remote; Infrastructure; Mobile

The researchers propose to design, implement, analyze and evaluate mechanisms that will enable mobile clients to opportunistically exploit computing, data and communication resources in the fixed infrastructure to facilitate information access. A mobile client typically faces many resource challenges. These include unpredictable variation in wireless network quality; wide disparity in the availability of remote services; limitations imposed by weight and size constraints on CPU power, memory size and disk capacity; and concern for battery power consumption. The goal is to exploit remote infrastructure, such as transient caching sites or compute servers, to overcome these challenges. When such infrastructure is unavailable or would be too expensive or slow to access in terms of battery power or bandwidth, the researchers wish to be able to continue operation relying solely on local resources. The challenge is to come up with the adaptive mechanisms, algorithms and policies that can be effectively implemented on a resource-limited mobile client, yet function smoothly and seamlessly from a user's viewpoint. The research will span both experimentation and analysis. On the one hand, the researchers plan to design, implement, and evaluate mobile computing systems embodying innovative solutions to the challenges described above. This will give the researchers the hands-on experience and insights needed to elucidate sound design principles for this domain. In parallel, the researchers plan to conduct an analytical and modelling effort to obtain a deeper understanding of fundamental tradeoffs in adaptation, and to explore a much broader region of the design space than feasible experimentally. This effort will be organized into three major thrusts: 1.Efficient file cache management for mobile clients 2.Offloading computation for energy and bandwidth savings 3.Modelling and analysis of adaptation tradeoffs In the first thrust, the researchers plan to explore the use of intermediate caching sites in the infrastructure to improve the efficiency of cache management in mobile file systems. The importance of caching for mobile information access is widely acknowledged, but what specific form it should take in the mobile systems of the future remains an open question. In the second thrust, the researchers will explore techniques for mobile clients to adaptatively offload computation on servers in the infrastructure. Such offloading may be useful for improved performance as well as enhanced battery life. In the third thrust, the researchers will analytically investigate a wide range of policies for the mechanisms developed in the other thrusts. The mobile computing systems of the future are likely to encounter considerable variability in environmental conditions, user preferences, and application characteristics. Characterizing this large multi-dimensional space analytically, and understanding its implications for alternative policies will be critical to the development of successful systems. If successful, the research will bring mobile computing one step closer to reality. Although commercial deployment of mobile computing systems is an enormous potential market for industry, many difficult technical problems remain to be solved. Incremental efforts by industry to extend today's widely-deployed commercial off-the-shelf systems to mobile environments will not solve these problems. The researchers proposed effort, combining experimentation and analysis on a key set of challenging problems, thus represents a high-risk, high-payoff venture.

研究人员建议设计，实施，分析和评估机制，使移动的客户端，以机会主义地利用计算，数据和通信资源的固定基础设施，以促进信息的访问。移动的客户端通常面临许多资源挑战。这些问题包括无线网络质量的不可预测变化;远程服务可用性的巨大差异; CPU功率、内存大小和磁盘容量的重量和大小限制所带来的限制;以及对电池功耗的关注。我们的目标是利用远程基础设施（如临时缓存站点或计算服务器）来克服这些挑战。当这样的基础设施不可用时，或者在电池功率或带宽方面太昂贵或访问速度太慢时，研究人员希望能够完全依靠本地资源继续运行。挑战在于提出可以在资源有限的移动的客户端上有效实现的自适应机制、算法和策略，但从用户的角度来看，这些机制、算法和策略可以平稳无缝地运行。 这项研究将包括实验和分析。一方面，研究人员计划设计、实现和评估移动的计算系统，这些系统体现了针对上述挑战的创新解决方案。这将为研究人员提供实践经验和见解，以阐明该领域的合理设计原则。与此同时，研究人员计划进行分析和建模工作，以更深入地了解适应中的基本权衡，并探索比实验可行的设计空间更广泛的区域。 这项工作将分为三个主要方面： 1.为移动的客户端提供高效的文件缓存管理 2.卸载计算以节省能源和带宽 3.适应权衡的建模和分析 在第一个推力中，研究人员计划探索在基础设施中使用中间缓存站点，以提高移动的文件系统中缓存管理的效率。高速缓存对于移动的信息访问的重要性已被广泛认可，但在未来的移动的系统中它应该采取什么具体形式仍然是一个悬而未决的问题。在第二个推力中，研究人员将探索移动的客户端在基础设施中的服务器上自适应卸载计算的技术。这样的卸载对于改进的性能以及增强的电池寿命可能是有用的。在第三个重点中，研究人员将分析研究在其他重点中开发的机制的广泛政策。未来的移动的计算系统可能会遇到环境条件、用户偏好和应用特性的相当大的变化。分析这一大型多维空间的特征，并了解其对替代政策的影响，将是成功的系统开发的关键。 如果成功，这项研究将使移动的计算离现实更近一步。尽管移动的计算系统的商业部署对于工业来说是一个巨大的潜在市场，但是许多困难的技术问题仍然有待于解决。工业界不断努力将当今广泛部署的商用现成系统扩展到移动的环境，但这并不能解决这些问题。研究人员提出的努力，结合实验和分析一组关键的挑战性问题，因此代表了一个高风险，高回报的企业。