Using publish/subscribe middleware for mobile systems

Abstract

The range of mobile computing applications comprises location-based services, sensor networks, and ad hoc networking. Middleware for these applications must effectively support the interaction of a priori anonymous entities, support timely decoupled processing, and mediate between potentially millions of mobile clients. These requirements are hard to achieve with traditional client/server middleware systems. We argue that the publish/subscribe paradigm effectively addresses many of the challenges raised by emerging mobile applications. In this paper, we give an overview of the publish/subscribe paradigm, present a detailed analysis of mobile application requirements, and discuss two proven implementations of this paradigm that address these requirements. We thus show that the publish/subscribe paradigm may effectively address most of the challenges raised by emerging mobile applications.