A Framework for Effective Data Transfer Stijn Bernaer Patrick De Causmaecker Joris Maervoet Greet Vanden Berghe AMobe - project

Introduction Disciplines Case studies Motivation Technical details Conclusion KaHo Sint-Lieven – Department of Industrial Engineering – IT Research Group AMobe  IWT funded project  Stands for ‘Application Development for Mobile Devices’  Executed by the I.T. Department of KaHo Sint- Lieven  °1/9/ † 31/8/2004  Partners

Introduction Disciplines Case studies Motivation Technical details Conclusion KaHo Sint-Lieven – Department of Industrial Engineering – IT Research Group Application Development for Mobile Devices  2 coordinators and 2 researchers  “How are mobile devices integrated in applications?” Based on 3 case studies  Development of FrEDT: an (agent) Framework for Effective Data Transfer  FrEDT is a generic agent organisation that manages client-server communication in a wireless environment  Runs on mobile devices with limited capacity

Introduction Disciplines Case studies Motivation Technical details Conclusion KaHo Sint-Lieven – Department of Industrial Engineering – IT Research Group Agent architecture Programming Platforms Operating Systems Agent Platforms Wireless technology Platforms FrEDT Disciplines

Introduction Disciplines Case studies Motivation Technical details Conclusion KaHo Sint-Lieven – Department of Industrial Engineering – IT Research Group Wireless communication technology  2.5G: 2G extensions for higher bitrates  Move from phone-oriented to data-oriented networks  Move from circuit-switched to packet-switched data  Average rates - GSM: 9.6 kbps - HSCSD: 28.8 kbps - GPRS: 40 kbps - UMTS: 384 kbps

Introduction Disciplines Case studies Motivation Technical details Conclusion KaHo Sint-Lieven – Department of Industrial Engineering – IT Research Group Agent architecture  Five trends have dominated computer history:  Ubiquity  Interconnection  Intelligence  Delegation  Human-orientation  How to incorporate these trends in our applications?

Introduction Disciplines Case studies Motivation Technical details Conclusion KaHo Sint-Lieven – Department of Industrial Engineering – IT Research Group Agent architecture  An agent is a computer system that is able to represent its owner  An agent can find out what it needs to realise its design goals  A multi-agent system consists of communicating agents  Those agents will represent owners with diverse interests and goals. They will have to collaborate, coordinate and negotiate.

Introduction Disciplines Case studies Motivation Technical details Conclusion KaHo Sint-Lieven – Department of Industrial Engineering – IT Research Group Agent architecture  FIPA (Foundation for Intelligent and Physical Agents) defines standards for heterogeneous and interacting agents and agent-based systems

Introduction Disciplines Case studies Motivation Technical details Conclusion KaHo Sint-Lieven – Department of Industrial Engineering – IT Research Group Agent architecture  FIPA agents communicate through the use of FIPA ACL (Agent Communication Language) messages  Ontologies decribe the structure and semantics of the message content. A content language provides the message syntax  Interaction protocols define possible sequences of high-level communicative acts (sequence of message types)

Introduction Disciplines Case studies Motivation Technical details Conclusion KaHo Sint-Lieven – Department of Industrial Engineering – IT Research Group Platforms for mobile devices Programming Platforms Personal Java Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME) Operating Systems Symbian OS Palm OS Windows CE (Pocket PC) Agent Platforms AgentLight µFIPA-OS JADE-LEAP Grasshopper

Introduction Disciplines Case studies Motivation Technical details Conclusion KaHo Sint-Lieven – Department of Industrial Engineering – IT Research Group Case 1 – Transfer of geographical data  Central geographical database  Mobile employees create Update Reports (UR)  Employees need to transfer these UR’s  Wireless synchronisation process between local and central Update Report DataBase (URDB)  Employees need the most recent Update Reports on regions that will be explored in the near future (pro-active)  Agents regulate the data traffic

Introduction Disciplines Case studies Motivation Technical details Conclusion KaHo Sint-Lieven – Department of Industrial Engineering – IT Research Group Case 2 – Supporting people with non-congenital brain injuries  People who have problems with coordinating and organising their daily life  Complete database on the supervisor’s computer and a subset of the data on the smartphone/PDA of the patient  Day’s schedule, addresses, instructions, itineraries, shopping lists  Optionally: mobile device for supervisor  Agents act as assistants

Introduction Disciplines Case studies Motivation Technical details Conclusion KaHo Sint-Lieven – Department of Industrial Engineering – IT Research Group Case 3 – Transfer of medical reports and analyses  Mobile employees visit companies for risk analysis, ergonomic analysis and medical inspection  Employees use a procedure handbook and a program to manage analysis records on their notebook  This book has to be updated regularly and changed records need to be exchanged with a central database  Agents are connection-aware and run in background

Introduction Disciplines Case studies Motivation Technical details Conclusion KaHo Sint-Lieven – Department of Industrial Engineering – IT Research Group Framework for Effective Data Transfer  Three cases  FrEDT  Generic agent organisation  Synchronisation mechanism  Wireless client-server environment  Agents negotiate about transactions with different priorities  Goals: to avoid congestion, to find a balance between transaction costs and transaction pending time

Introduction Disciplines Case studies Motivation Technical details Conclusion KaHo Sint-Lieven – Department of Industrial Engineering – IT Research Group Why agents?  Component-based environment  To assist the end user  Asynchronity = delay independence  Autonomy, continuity  Adaptivity, proactivity  Negotiation

Introduction Disciplines Case studies Motivation Technical details Conclusion KaHo Sint-Lieven – Department of Industrial Engineering – IT Research Group FrEDT Ontology  Development of an device context ontology for FrEDT  An example: ConnectionAID Name (STRING) Bandwidth (INTEGER) Cost (INTEGER) UpdateRegistration

Introduction Disciplines Case studies Motivation Technical details Conclusion KaHo Sint-Lieven – Department of Industrial Engineering – IT Research Group Transactions and decisions  Decisions about transaction planning are taken centrally (no local filtering)  Aware of connection rate and cost. (If necessary, indicated by the user.)  Non-urgent transactions are delayed based on prediction. Central transaction management DeviceServer 1: Request 2: Agree 3: Transaction

Central transaction management DeviceServer 1: Request 2: Agree 3: Transaction

Introduction Disciplines Case studies Motivation Technical details Conclusion KaHo Sint-Lieven – Department of Industrial Engineering – IT Research Group Negotiation Agent  Represents the device interests  Gathers knowledge about connection speed and costs and passes this information to the Index Agent  Receives application specific transaction requests  Handles further request negotiation with the Synchro Agent  Delegates transactions after agreement (creates temporary Transaction Agents)

Introduction Disciplines Case studies Motivation Technical details Conclusion KaHo Sint-Lieven – Department of Industrial Engineering – IT Research Group Negotiation Agent  How does the Negotiation Agent gather knowledge about the connection?  Speed: mainly pings (same protocol as transaction) to the Index Agent.  Costs: clustering if possible, else interaction with the user is needed  How often is knowledge about connection updated? 1.When the device logs on 2.After completed transactions 3.Pings at regular times

Introduction Disciplines Case studies Motivation Technical details Conclusion KaHo Sint-Lieven – Department of Industrial Engineering – IT Research Group Negotiation Agent  Device should know when it is worth to notify the connection change to the central system  Heikki Helin: watermark technique  FrEDT: proportion of current connection to last registered connection

Introduction Disciplines Case studies Motivation Technical details Conclusion KaHo Sint-Lieven – Department of Industrial Engineering – IT Research Group Database Agent Transaction Agent  Created by the Negotiation Agent  Is responsible to handle the raw transaction  Lifetime = 1 transaction  Independent on transaction protocol  Separates the framework from the application- specific database

Introduction Disciplines Case studies Motivation Technical details Conclusion KaHo Sint-Lieven – Department of Industrial Engineering – IT Research Group Index Agent  Holds a central register of logged-on devices and their connections  Devices interact with this agent to keep this register up-to-date  Answers questions concerning this register

Introduction Disciplines Case studies Motivation Technical details Conclusion KaHo Sint-Lieven – Department of Industrial Engineering – IT Research Group Prediction Agent  Generates predictions on connections and costs  Provides the Synchro Agent with predictions to assist in transaction scheduling  Periodic model (assumes periodic behaviour) with recency effect

Introduction Disciplines Case studies Motivation Technical details Conclusion KaHo Sint-Lieven – Department of Industrial Engineering – IT Research Group Synchro Agent  Receives transaction requests from interested servers and devices  Schedules transactions - decisions are made based on following indicators:  Application-defined priority (from Negotiation Agent)  Connection rate and costs (from Index Agent) and their predictions (from Prediction Agent) of sender/receiver  Pending time

Introduction Disciplines Case studies Motivation Technical details Conclusion KaHo Sint-Lieven – Department of Industrial Engineering – IT Research Group Conclusion  FrEDT is suited for effective datatransfer in different situations  FrEDT joins several disciplines: agents, mobile devices and wireless communication technology  Points of attention:  Fault-tolerance and security (provided by the agent platform)  Complex ontological transaction requests

Introduction Disciplines Case studies Motivation Technical details Conclusion KaHo Sint-Lieven – Department of Industrial Engineering – IT Research Group Demonstration  At the DSP Valley stand …