Location-aware event-based middleware: A paradigm for collaborative mobile applications?

Abstract

Existing research on event-based middleware for mobile computing has mainly focused on supporting nomadic applications using wireless data communication based on the infrastructure network model. Relatively little work has been done to accommodate collaborative applications that often use ad hoc networks. This paper describes a novel kind of event-based middleware, called STEAM, that has been designed for use in ad hoc networks. STEAM differs from other event-based middleware in that its architecture does not rely on the presence of any separate infrastructure and event notification filters may be used to define geographical areas within which event notifications are valid, thereby bounding the propagation of these notifications. Such proximity-based filtering represents a natural way to filter events of interest in collaborative mobile applications.