An Application Architecture for Mobile Interactive Spaces
Theo Kanter
Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden

Fourth-generation wireless networks (4G) will be heterogeneous, and in which users will be able use multimedia with end to end IP connectivity over the wireless links. This scenario allows us to move the services from the network out to the mobile devices, and puts requirements on new abilities for mobile users, devices and resources to deal with changing communication conditions and context. Furthermore we need to enable mobile users, devices and resources to plug and play into shared spaces on Internet. Our application architecture involves mobile agents running in the mobile device, using SIP for naming and localization, and session invocation, and an eXtensible Service Protocol for enabling users, mobile devices and resources to negotiate communication with minimal prior shared knowledge. Thus we enable the creation of so-called Mobile Interactive Spaces, which extends the notion of Smart Spaces to the scope of Mobile Networks. The demonstration shows user initiated negotiation of invocation of a mobile-aware media player that is running in the end-device, while assisted by support agents that are aware of mobile resources to be able to deal with the heterogeneous network while the user moves.

See also Kanter's WIP presentation and his web site.