Using Moving Object Databases to Provide Context Information in Mobile Ad-hoc Networks

Applications deployed in mobile peer-to-peer systems have to cope with mobility and fluctuation of nodes. These dynamics restrict the reliability of communication links as well as the availability of certain nodes, services, and resources. Exploring the context of nodes can be used to anticipate these shortages. Context-awareness enables improvement of performance of systems and enables adaptation of applications in order to make their behavior more relevant with respect to their current situation. Preevaluation of context can be used to estimate future availability of crucial resources and reliability of communication links. Which information is considered to be relevant context information varies according to the application scenario. In this paper, we present a model for context information along with a mobile service that provides a local view of surrounding nodes in a Mobile Ad-hoc NETwork (MANET). The service is designed to enable efficient prediction of future stability of the vicinity of a node.