Infrastructure for Context-Aware Wireless Network Applications

信息系统现在是移动的、可穿戴的、多模式的、实时的、可扩展的，从工作站到台式电脑到笔记本电脑到掌上电脑再到蜂窝、协作的、无处不在的。网络接入作为计算基础设施的一部分正变得越来越重要。不幸的是，在短期内，无限制的带宽，随时接入网络是不可行的，特别是在大型城市环境中，干扰，遮挡和碰撞是持续存在的问题。为了缓解这种情况，我们正在开发一套上下文感知的自主信息检索（AIR）吊舱。这些是小型的，坚固的低成本计算机，只需要电力。AIR pods有足够的本地存储空间来保存相对静态的信息，并配备了两个无线接口：一个是短距离的、未经许可的高速接口，如IEEE 802.11；一个是远距离的、低速的接口，如CDPD或其他可能间歇性的广域网连接。AIR吊舱可以是固定的也可以是移动的。固定的AIR pods可以安装在灯柱和交通灯上，隐藏在有灯的商店标志或地铁站里。MobileAIR吊舱可以安装在送货卡车、邮政服务车辆、公共汽车、警车、出租车或其他在城市街道上漫游的车辆上。空气舱也足够小，可以放在背包里携带。我们建议开发和实现原型硬件和软件AIR的想法，并探索什么样的基础设施支持是必要的，使这些设备成为网络应用的关键组成部分。研究问题将涉及协作数据共享、资源调度和预期缓存、消息传播和广域资源发现。拟议的移动网络基础设施将在一系列要求苛刻的环境感知移动研究项目中进行测试。第一个项目是一个可穿戴增强现实系统，它允许户外用户交互式地参观校园。第二个相关项目允许室内用户通过无线网络与室外用户进行协作。第三个项目是移动机器人传感系统，可以自主探索校园，创建丰富的3D、纹理映射、场地模型。所有这些应用程序都需要通过有限的网络访问与主机进行交互，我们建议使用上下文感知无线网络在带宽、设备和局部性上优化这种交互。

Information systems are now mobile, wearable, multimodal, real-time, scalable from workstations todesktops to notebooks to palmtops to cellular, collaborative and ubiquitous. Network access is becomingincreasingly important as a part of the computing infrastructure. Unfortunately, for the near term, un-limited bandwidth, anytime access to a network is not feasible, particularly in large urban environmentswhere interference, occlusion and collision are ongoing problems. To alleviate this, we are developing aset of context-aware Autonomous Information Retrieval (AIR) pods. These are small, hardened low-costcomputers that require only electric power. AIR pods have sufficient local storage to hold relatively staticinformation and are equipped with two wireless interfaces: one short-range, unlicensed high-speed interfacesuch as IEEE 802.11 and one long-range, low-speed interface such as CDPD or other Wide Area Networkconnection which may be intermittent. AIR pods can be either stationary or mobile. Stationary AIR podscan be attached to lamp posts and traffic lights, hidden in lighted store signs or in subway stations. MobileAIR pods can be attached to delivery trucks, postal service vehicles, buses, police cruisers, taxis or othervehicles that roam city streets. AIR pods are also small enough to be carried in backpacks. We propose to develop and implement the prototype hardware and software AIR idea, and explore whatkinds of infrastructure support are necessary to make these devices a key component of network applications.Research issues addressed will be cooperative data sharing, resource scheduling and anticipatory caching,message propagation and wide-area resource discovery. The proposed mobile networking infrastructure will be tested in a demanding set of context-aware mo-bile research projects. The first project is a wearable augmented reality system that allows outdoor users to tour a campus interactively. A second related project allows indoor users to collaborate with those outside over wireless networks. The third project is a mobile robot sensing system that can autonomously explore the campus and create rich 3D, texture mapped, site models. All of these applications need to interact with host computers through limited network access, and we propose to optimize this interaction over bandwidth, devices, and locality using context-aware wireless networks.