A programming language for ad-hoc networks of mobile devices
Yang Ni, Ulrich Kremer, Liviu Iftode · 2004
Networks of embedded systems and mobile devices are a new and emerging computing platform. Nodes in such networks may range from sensors, cell phones, PDAs, to laptop computers. Wireless ad-hoc networks are used to connect these heterogeneous nodes, where each node may provide different services and has different capabilities and resources. Most applications targeting such networks will exploit the location of the network nodes in a physical space of interest. Spatial Views (SV) is a language that provides high-level abstractions for applications executing on volatile networks of embedded systems and mobile devices. The supported abstractions include dynamic service discovery, location-awareness, and in-network aggregation. The programming model relies on the compiler to translate high level SV programs into low level programs that use light-weight execution migration and property based routing. This paper investigates the impact of parallelization and replicated execution on program performance metrics such as response time, energy consumption, and quality of result. For a simple application program, analytical modeling, simulation, and physical measurements show that different energy/execution time/QoR tradeoffs can be observed for different parallelization strategies and degrees of replication. The experiments use node failure rates to specify the degree of volatility of the mobile target network. 1.