The fast development of mobile computing has produced a wide variety of technologies that affect systems in the mobile computing realm. Even though mobile computing focuses the importance of interrelated systems, the qualifying of interoperability remains an important constraint. In this chapter, several techniques are explained to manage various heterogeneity characteristics along with the key concepts related to these systems. A general approach is described to manage the heterogeneity. It has been seen that to have a better performance in overlapping networks, it is necessary to switch between the networks due to mobility and congestion. This problem is overcome by overlay networks that identify the existing network and then select the best network and allow transmission from one node to another node in the same network or create a novel network. In this way, this architecture provides a way to transmit packets to the mobile host using the available network.
TopIntroduction
Both the mobile computing devices and mobile computing systems are affected a lot with the enormous growth in the field of mobile computing which initiated the high range of heterogeneous technologies. The interoperability is the key feature which is highly required to be enabled since the utilization of interconnected systems is concentrated by mobile computing. But the interoperability is difficult to be incorporated in the heterogeneous systems. High level of heterogeneity is supported by mobile computing because of the heterogeneous features of mobile devices, resources, operating system, network capabilities, and applications which includes the persistent access to mobile services and omnipresent communication among mobile hosts.
The two mobile hosts that are able to move around in their respective networks are permitted to utilize the communication link by the communication among mobile devices. The user communicates with the backend systems with the help of mobile device connected to a networks backend system. The respective functions are activated on the backend with respect to this communication process. For example a user’s request is serviced with a definite response by the mobile server.
The middleware solutions are used to simplify the complexity of heterogeneity. One of the possible solutions is multilevel layer technique. In this multilayer architecture, the topmost layer will be the application layer, the middle layer with the middleware layer and the bottom most layer will be the heterogeneous environment. Thus the heterogeneous environment is accessed evidently with the fundamental heterogeneity hidden.
Multi-modeling means making the communication possible among various Models of Computations (MoCs) by interconnecting them. Different kinds of tools from various vendors are integrated and breakable tool chains are introduced. When various tools are integrated, obviously there will be many challenges to be resolved, but it is important to concentrate on the semantics of interoperation. A better perceptive of semantics of interoperation leads to a better software architectures for interoperation. Figure 1 as in (Schmohl, & Baumgarten, 2008) shows a sample fundamental middleware approach.