Typology and Challenges in Developing Mobile Middleware Based Community Network Infrastructure

The evolution of mobile devices has opened new opportunities for collaboration, communication and computation on the move. Increasing device capabilities, instant connectivity, portability, rapidly reducing costs, etc. are some of the drivers for this change. Though mobile devices have lower processing power, memory capabilities compared to the stationary computing devices and deal with varying network conditions with reduced power, the demand for anywhere anytime computing is a significant driver for change. There is great interest in application development for mobile devices which caters to different needs of the users. Applications can be easily developed as complete middleware systems which can provide a great deal of abstraction for users. There is great interest in designing novel and scalable mobile middleware especially utilizing the capabilities available for collaboration and communication. This work traces the factors contributing to the proliferation of mobile communities and places the middleware for mobile community networks in a current and future perspective. The architecture for middleware based mobile community network is proposed and the challenges in implementing such a network are also discussed.