System Support for Mobile, Adaptive Applications
Noble, Brian
Abstract
Imagine that, while on a business trip to Paris,
you decide to take a few extra days to sample the city's museums.
When you buy your museum pass, you are given a virtual tour guide device
- a small PDA that can deliver information about specific pieces in the
museum system as well as general information about the city. This
device communicates via wireless networks. In or near a museum, the
device has access to a high-speed micro-cellular network; in the rest of
the city, it makes use of the GSM infrasctructure. The user can ask
this device to elaborate on specific sites or pieces, display related information,
or perform geographically-based queries. These requests are satisfied
by applications such as a customized Web browser and a video playback application.
When within range of a museum's high-quality network, the displayed information
is of excellent quality; images are at high resolution and color, and video
is delivered in full motion. However, when the user strays away from
the high-bandwidth network, each application degrades the quality of the
data it delivers so that it arrives in a timely fashion.