Media Abstraction Framework for the Pervasive Middleware PalCom

Pervasive middleware systems are important for enabling the configuration and coordination of the services provided by devices in pervasive environments. PalCom is an example of such a system that aims to enable interaction among pervasive services over heterogeneous networks. In this paper we discuss the need for providing networking-media independent messaging among pervasive devices, and identify the problem of designing a media abstraction framework for a pervasive middleware. We identify a number of design principles and features that need to be satisfied by such a framework. The most important of these principles is the separation of networking protocol aspects into abstraction representations, which are exposed in a unified format to upper layers of PalCom, and communication mechanisms which are hidden by media-specific implementations of our proposed media-abstraction framework for PalCom. Also, we explain our implementation and evaluation of that framework.