Mobile & Pervasive Computing at the University of Florida

Director and Principal Investigator | Dr. Sumi Helal

Mobile Computing & Networking Research

The Mobile and Pervasive Computing Lab is focused on systems research and experimental aspects of Mobile Computing, emphasizing Mobile Computing Models, Mobile Data Access, Mobile Networking, and Power-Aware Mobile Computing. Individual projects are listed below.

Mobile Database Design, Access, & Transactions ❯ Mobile Transactions

Overview

Unlike distributed transactions, mobile transactions do not originate and end at the same site. They are long live transactions whose logic is coupled to several mobility parameters such as location, direction of movement and speed. Mobile transactions are likely to exhibit inadequate communication bandwidth or sporadic or long disconnections. Classical atomicity, concurrency and recovery solutions orginially designed for distributed transactions must be revisited to accommodate the new nature and requirements for mobile transactions. We are currently working on several transaction models with recent focus on the disconnected (also known in the literature as two-tier) transaction case.

Objective

The overall self describing sensor network approach is based on the need to provide a scalable, plug and play, smart sensor network that is more flexible and maintainable. The approach leverages both mature and new technologies and standards to develop the system architecture composed of the sensor platform architecture, sensor network hierarchy, and associated software framework. The main approach consists of empowering the sensor network by using surrogate code located on the sensor node to allow interpretation of the data and sensor node control. Our sensor network hardware platform includes RF communications, EEPROM for data storage, EEPROM for surrogate storage, and microprocessor for communication and data manipulation.

People

Dr. Sumi Helal
Dr. Minsoo Lee
Young Park

Publications

M. Lee and A. Helal, "HiCoMo: High Commit Mobile Transactions," Distributed and Parallel Databases 11(1):73-92;Jan 2002 (pdf).
A. Helal, S. Balakrishnan, M. Dunham and R. Li , "A Survey on Mobile Transaction Models," Book Chapter in Mobile and Wireless Computing and Communication, Chapman Hall/CRC (Azzedine Boukerche , Editor), Submitted 2002.
M. Dunham, A. Helal, and S. Balakrishnan, "A Mobile Transaction Model that Captures Both the Data and Movement Behavior," the ACM-Baltzer Jounal on Mobile Networks and Applications (MONET), Volume 2, Number 2, pp149-162, October 1997.