Mobile Computing. Implementing Pervasive Information and Communications Technologies

Virtual enterprises and mobile computing are emerging as innovative responses to the challenges of doing business in an increasingly mobile and global marketplace. In this rapidly changing environment, it is critical to focus on the fundamental technological aspects that enable the concept of pervasive computing. This text is designed to address some of the business and technical challenges of pervasive computing that encompass current and emerging technology standards, infrastructures and architectures and innovative and high impact applications of mobile technologies in virtual enterprises. The various articles examine a host of issues including: the challenges and current solutions in mobile connectivity and co-ordination; management infrastructures; innovative architectures for fourth generation wireless and ad-hoc networks; error-free frequency assignments for wireless communication; cost-effective wavelength assignments in optical communication networks; data and transaction modelling in a mobile environment and bandwidth issues and data routing in mobile ad-hoc networks.; The book is organized around four categories of mobile and pervasive computing and technologies: business and management, architecture, communication and computing. The first three chapters focus on the business aspects of mobile computing and virtual organization. The fourth chapter lays out an architecture for a fourth generation wireless network. Chapters 5 and 6 are geared towards communication technology, both wireless and wireline. Chapter 7 is a taxonomy of data management environments in mobile computing and chapter 8 is a review article on data and transaction management and research directions in this area. Finally, chapter 9 addresses various routing strategies for the seamless switching between mobile hosts in an ad-hoc network. The primary audience for this book is industry practitioners, university faculty, independent researchers and graduate students. The articles have a mix of current and successful efforts, innovative ideas on providing the infrastructure support and open problems - both conceptual and experimental.