Transmission of continuous query results in mobile computing systems

Abstract

In a mobile computing environment, a user with a wireless connection to the information network can access data via submitting queries to data servers. As the mobility is the most distinguishing feature of the mobile computing paradigm, location becomes an important piece of information for the so-called location-dependent queries, where the answer to a query depends on the current location of the user who issued the query. A location-dependent query submitted by a mobile user can become more difficult to process when it is submitted as a continuous query (CQ) for which the answer changes as the user moves. The answer to a location-dependent CQ can be provided as a set of tuples [S, begin, end] indicating that object S is the answer of the query from time begin to time end. Once the tuples in the answer set are determined, the next step is to determine the transmission time of these tuples to the user. Transmission time of tuples is critical in the sense that it can have a considerable impact on both the communication overhead imposed on the wireless network and the availability of tuples in case of disconnections. In this paper, we propose three tuple transmission approaches that can be used to determine the transmission time of tuples in the answer set of a location-dependent CQ. We also evaluate the relative performance of the proposed approaches under different settings of environmental parameters. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.