Enhancing the Horizons of Mobile Computing with Mobile Agent Components

The key issues in mobile computing include mobility-related challenges such as location transparency and dependency (e.g. loss or degradation of wireless connections); wireless networking problems such as low bandwidth, high latency wireless networks; low quality connections (e.g. network errors and failures); and portability issues such as power, processing, memory, and display limitations. To address the mobility-related and wireless networking issues as well as the challenges of adaptability, flexibility, extensibility, maintainability, reliability, resilience of mobile systems, we have explored mobile agent approach for development of wireless mobile systems. In a research project, co-sponsored by IBM and HP, we have developed a mobile system architecture using mobile agent components, and built a demonstration prototype. Mobile agent approach has emerged as a viable approach for development of mobile systems. In this paper, we present and discuss the latest results and lessons learned from this research project and the future plans.