Surrogate object model: A new paradigm for distributed mobile systems

Abstract

Distributed mobile systems are characterized by asymmetry in both network connectivity and computing power, mobility of hosts and their constraints. To address these issues, existing approaches attempt to completely redesign distributed applications or algorithms to make them work in a distributed mobile environment. This paper proposes an alternate mechanism namely, the surrogate object model to handle the asymmetry problem in distributed mobile systems. The surrogate object is a representative for a particular Mobile Host (MH) in the wired network that maintains application specific data structures and methods. The surrogate object model maintains a cache of data stored in the mobile host and reduces wireless data transfers. The proposed novel model also provides an ideal placeholder for MH location information, thus solving the location management problem to handle mobility of hosts. A comprehensive simulation study of the surrogate object model has been done. Performance studies of a sample application with and without the surrogate object model illustrates the efficiency of developing applications over the surrogate object model.