JCSE, vol. 5, no. 4, pp.314-315, December, 2011

DOI:

Introduction to the Special Issue: Developing Embedded Software Technology for the Smart Mobile Platform

Jong Kim, Gary Geunbae Lee
POSTECH

Abstract: One of the hottest IT topics in recent years is the smartphone, such as iPhone and Android phones. We have witnessed many changes brought about by these smart phones and services associated with them. We believe that the App is the main driving force in bringing various new services to these smart phones. In order to launch new services using Apps, researchers have been developing technologies in many areas such as wireless communication, hardware, sensors, OS, middleware, software platforms, and software tools. We still need additional advances in IT technologies to bring more advanced services. The Center for Mobile Embedded Software Technology (CMEST) in POSTECH was established in 2005 to research and develop embedded software technologies for smart mobile platforms. Research topics related to the smart mobile platform span from communication to Apps. CMEST focuses on the embedded software technology needed for the development of the smart mobile platforms. Topics include software for communication, mobile OS, middleware platform, and multi-modal interfaces such as voice and vision. Most smart mobile platforms have at least two communication media such as cellular, WLAN and Bluetooth. They will have more communication modes as communication technology advances communication. They need a lot of communication software to assist these various communication modes and their cooperation. Similarly, many OS issues such as multitasking, virtualization, and security also require research attention. Besides, there are many research topics related to embedded software technologies for smart mobile platforms. This special issue is focused on state-of-the-art approaches in the area of enhancing smart mobile platforms and services on them. We invited papers from the researchers currently participating at CMEST for the project “Developing Advanced Embedded Software Technology for Smart Mobile Platform”, which is under progress. Each paper was reviewed by external reviewers on the basis of technical quality, originality, significance, and clarity. The accepted papers show the diversity of embedded software research areas related to the smart mobile platform. We selected five papers; two on communication, one on security, one on a battery app, and one on service software. The first paper is “Multicast Extension to Proxy Mobile IPv6 for Mobile Multicast Services” by Daehyeok Kim, Wan-Seon Lim, and Young-Joo Suh. It looked into an extended protocol to provide efficient multicast services using Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6). Mobile platform requires a handover service. The multicast protocol provides an optimal delivery path with reduced handover delay and packet loss rate during handover. For supporting multicast services with PMIPv6, there are two approaches called mobile access gateway (MAG)-based subscription and local mobility anchor (LMA)-based subscription. They have either a large overhead for the multicast joining process or non-optimal multicast routing paths. They may also have a high packet loss rate. In the paper, the authors show that the proposed protocol outperforms existing multicast solutions for PMIPv6 in terms of end-to-end delay, service disruption period, and the number of lost packets during handovers through simulation. The second paper is titled “Fast Retransmission Scheme for Overcoming Hidden Node Problem in IEEE 802.11 Networks” by Junghwi Jeon, Chulmin Kim, Kiseok Lee, and Cheeha Kim. This paper deals with how to speed up retransmission while there is a hidden node problem. The hidden node problem is well known in wireless networks; it creates a collision that cannot be easily detected by senders, and causes time wastage due to retransmission. There have been many collision prevention and recovery approaches proposed so far, but all of them are known to have complex control overheads. The authors of this paper proposed a fast retransmission scheme as a recovery approach. Their approach is based on identifying collisions caused by hidden nodes and then allowing retransmission without collision. The authors show through analysis and simulations that the proposed scheme has greater throughput than RTS/CTS and a shorter average waiting time. The third paper is titled “Data Firewall: A TPM-based Security Framework for Protecting Data in Thick Client Mobile Environment” and is written by Wooram Park and Chanik Park. Mobile platforms like laptops have difficulty in using thin client technology based on the VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) while they are moving. When thick client technology is used, data leakage is possible due to malicious software installed in thick client mobile devices. In this paper, the authors have presented a security framework, called a Data Firewall, to manage and protect security-sensitive data in thick client mobile devices. The framework has two types of execution VMs, known as Normal VM and Secure VM. Access to security-sensitive data is only allowed in the Secure VM whose integrity should be checked in advance before access is granted. Protected Storage is provided to store all security-sensitive data, whose access keys are managed by the Data Firewall. TPM is used to handle key management issues. The authors have analyzed the security characteristics, built a prototype to demonstrate the framework, and shown the performance overhead of their method. The fourth paper is “Personalized Battery Lifetime Prediction for Mobile Devices based on Usage Patterns” by Joon-Myung Kang1, Sin-seok Seo, and James Won-Ki Hong. Among the most difficult hurdles to solve for mobile devices are battery related problems. Not only is prolonging the battery lifetime important, but also predicting the remaining battery lifetime accurately is a big issue. As mobile platform technology advances, there are more activities that can be performed using mobile devices. The battery lifetime of a mobile device highly depends on the average battery consumption of each activity and the length of time the user spends on it. In the paper, the authors propose an approach to predict a mobile device’s available battery lifetime based on usage patterns. Their approach is based on three steps; defining states that affect batter consumption, recording usage pattern such as state and time, and predicting the amount of battery power consumed and available based on these usage patterns. The authors have implemented this system to validate the proposed approach in the real world. The last paper is “Online Clustering Algorithms for Semantic-Rich Network Trajectories” by Gook-Pil Roh and Seung-won Hwang. Nowadays, smart mobile devices produce enormous amounts of data. One part of this data is trajectory data. Trajectory data is published and shared in a web. Mining of trajectory data to find user-specific preferences or context (e.g., time of the day) may be needed for various tailored services. Previously proposed trajectory clustering algorithms have typically focused on off-line mining. Also, they have not considered the restrictions of the underlying road network and selection conditions representing user contexts. In the paper, the authors investigated an efficient on-line clustering algorithm for Boolean clustering queries. Their proposed algorithm uses a pre-materialized data summary structure. The authors have experimented using real-life trajectory data to demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of their proposed method. We believe that as smart mobile devices advance many new services will become available. Embedded software technology for smart mobile platform will become more diverse and wide ranging. In this special issue, although we included only five papers, we hope these papers will help the reader find more issues and insights into the advance of smart mobile platforms. Finally, we would like to thank all those individuals who helped to make this special issue

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