A distributed application model for mobile networks

Abstract

With the mobile devices becoming increasingly popular, there is a new appetite for applications for these devices. However, the problem faced by the application developers is that such devices have limited processing ability together with limited memory. At the same time, the servers have faster processing speed and larger memory. In this case, an obvious solution would have been to shift the majority of the computation and storage on to the server. Whenever a user wants to access this information, he generates a request and the results are transported to his/her mobile device. The user is required to select various options at the device screen before getting the final result front the server. Each time an option is selected, data transfer takes place between the two ends. The bandwidth available to a mobile user is inadequate to facilitate such large and frequent data transfers. This paper presents a three-tier application model that works specifically for the GSM networks (i.e. 2nd and higher generation of mobile networks). Using this model, various new and extremely useful applications can be designed. They would require no extra, expensive hardware and can easily fit into the existing network infrastructure