Supporting Multimedia in a Mobile Environment

15.12.2003

Abstract

Middleware has for some period of time been now been the preferred programming model of distributed systems. The advantage of middleware is that it present a unified programming model by hiding problems of distribution and heterogeneity so that the programmer can concentrate on the functionality of the application to develop. Traditional middleware provides, to a large extent at least, only means for performing remote method invocation. The emerging fields of both multimedia and mobile computing are given little support from current middleware solutions. Both these fields of computer science are emerging as ever more popular among users and system developers and as these also represents complex challenges for the programmers. This clearly calls for support from middleware.

In this thesis a middleware programming model for supporting multimedia in a mobile environment is presented. The approach chosen to achieve this is to design and implement an open and explicit binding that provides support for streams, QoS management, context awareness and adaption. To achieve this traditional middleware is not suited due to the fact they do not pose the ability to be reconfigurated. In this thesis a configurable and reconfigurable middleware platform called OOPP is used. This platform provide the necessary means for adaption to take place.

The work done in this thesis have been conducted under the Arctic Beans research group at the University of Tromsø. This group are concerned with the next generation of middleware, that is how to make middleware more flexible and adaptable. Both multimedia and mobility need flexible and adaptive support from the middleware platform. This thesis contributes to the Arctic Beans project with better knowlegde of about how to handle this support in middleware.

Keywords:
middleware, multimedia, mobility, Quality of Service, open implementation, adaption, reflection.