UNIT-3rd

MOBILE COMPUTING ( KCA-051 )

Data Management issues in Mobile Computing:=>

Data management technology that can support easy data access from and to mobile devices is
among the main concerns in mobile information systems. Mobile computing may be considered
a variation of distributed computing. The two scenarios in which mobile databases is distributed
are:

Among the wired components, the entire database is distributed, possibly with full or partial
replication.

Among the wired and wireless components, the database is distributed. Among the base stations
or fixed hosts and mobile units, the data management responsibility is shared. Here are some of
the issues which arises in data management of the mobile databases:

1. Mobile database design – Because of the frequent shutdown and for handling the
queries, the global name resolution problem is compounded.

2. Security – The data which is left at the fixed location is more secure as compared to
mobile data. That is mobile data is less secure. Data are also becoming more volatile and
techniques must be able to compensate for its loss. The most important thing needed in
this environment is the authorizing access to critical data and proper techniques.

3. Data distribution and replication – Uneven distribution of data among the mobile units
and the base stations take place here. Higher data availability and low cost of remote
access is there in data distribution and replication. The problem of Cache management is
compounded by the consistency constraints. The most updated data and frequently
accessed data is provided by the Caches to the mobile units. It process their own
transactions. There is most efficient access of data and higher security is available.

4. Replication issues – There is increase of costs for updates and signalling due to increase
in number of replicas. Mobile hosts can move anywhere and anytime.

5. Division of labour – There is a certain change in the division of labour in query

processing because of certain characteristics of the mobile environment. There are some
of the cases in which the client must function independently of the server.

6. Transaction models – In mobile environment, the issues of correctness of transactions

and fault tolerance are aggravated. All transactions must satisfy the ACID properties,
these are atomic, consistency, isolation, and durability. Depending upon the movement of
the mobile unit, possibly on multiple data sets and through several base station, a mobile
transaction is executed sequentially. When the mobile computers are disconnected, ACID
properties gets hard to enforce. Because of the disconnection in mobile units, there is
expectation that a mobile transaction will be lived long.

7. Recovery and fault tolerance – Fault tolerance is the ability of a system to perform its
function correctly even in the presence of internal faults. Faults can be classified in two
types: transient and permanent. Without any apparent intervention, a transient fault will
be eventually disappeared but a permanent fault will remain unless it is removed by some
external agency. The characterization of mobile computing is done by:
 Limiting resource availability
 Frequent disconnection
 High mobility
 Low bandwidth

8. Location based service – One of the most challenging tasks which must be undertaken is
determining the location of mobile users, which must be undertaken in order to enable a location
based service. A cache information becomes sale when clients move location dependent.
Eviction techniques are important in this case. Issues that arises in location and services are:
 User Privacy
 Diverse mobile mapping standards
 Market capability
 Interoperability
Updation of the location dependent queries and then applying spatial queries to refresh the cache
causes a problem.

9. Query processing – Because of the mobility and rapid resource changes of mobile units,
Query optimization becomes the most complicated. That is query processing is affected when
mobility is considered. There is a need to returned a query response to mobile units that may be
in transit. The cost that affects the most in centralized environments is the input/output.
Communication cost is the most important in distributed environments. It is possible to
formulate location dependent queries.

Data Replication in Mobile Computing:=>

Data Replication:

Data Replication in mobile computing means the sharing of information to ensure data
consistency between software and hardware resources connected via the internet, to improve
reliability, availability, fault-tolerance, and accessibility of data.

In simpler terms, data replication is the process of storing different copies of the database at
two or more sites in order to improve data availability in less time and at a cheaper cost.

Data replication in mobile computing is a popular fault tolerance technique for distributed
databases.

Advantages of Data Replication:=>

In modern mobile computing, scenario data replication has been adopted as an efficient way
to ensure data availability, integrity, and an effective means to achieve fault tolerance. Data
replication not only ensures the availability of the data but also minimizes the communication
cost, increase data sharing, and enhance the security of sensitive data. Data replication in
mobile computing also determines when and which location to store the replica of data,
controlling different data replicas over a network for efficient utilization of the network
resources.
Data Replication Benefits:=>

Important benefits of data replication are as below-

 Reliability − Data replication provides the reliability of data. In case of failure of any site, the
database system continues to work since a copy is available at another site(s).
 Reduction in Network Load − since local copies of data are available through data
replication. Therefore, query processing can be done with reduced network usage,
particularly during prime hours.
 Data updating can be done at non-prime hours – Due to data replication data can be
updated easily.
 Quicker Response − Availability of local copies of data ensures quick query processing and
consequently quick response time.
 Simpler Transactions − Transactions require less number of joins of tables located at
different sites and minimal coordination across the network. Thus, they become simpler in
nature.

Disadvantages of Data Replication:=>

 Increased Storage Requirements − Maintaining multiple copies of data is associated with

increased storage costs. The storage space required is in multiples of the storage required for
a centralized system.
 Increased Cost and Complexity of Data Updating − each time a data item is updated, the
update needs to be reflected in all the copies of the data at the different sites. This requires
complex synchronization techniques and protocols.

Goals of data replication

Data replication is performed with the purpose of

 Increasing the availability of data.

 Speeding up the query evaluation.

Types of Data Replication:=>

There are two types of data replication

1. Synchronous Replication
In synchronous replication, the replica of the database is modified immediately after changes
are made in the relation table.
So there is no difference between the original data and the replicated data table.
2. Asynchronous replication
In asynchronous replication, the replica will be modified after commit action is fired on to the
database.
 Replication Schemes:=>
The three replication schemes are as follows:

1. Full Replication Scheme:=>

In full replication scheme, the database is available at all the locations to ease the user in the
communication network

Advantages of full replication

 It gives high availability of data. In this scheme, the database is available at each location.
 It supports faster execution of queries.

Disadvantages of full replication

 In a full replication scheme, concurrency control is difficult to achieve in full replication.

 During updating each and every side need to be updated therefore update operation is slower.

2. No Replication:=>

No replication means each fragment is stored exactly at one location only.

Advantages of no replication

 Concurrency can be easily minimized.

 Easy recovery of data becomes easy.

Disadvantages of no replication

 Poor availability of data.

 Slows down the query execution process, because multiple clients are accessing the same
data at the same server.

3. Partial replication:=>

A partial replication scheme means only part of the or data fragments are replicated.

Adaptive clustering in mobile wireless networks:=>

/*Personal communications and mobile computing require a wireless network infrastructure

which is fast deployable, possibly multihop, and capable of multimedia service support. The
first infrastructure of this type was the Packet Radio Network (PRNET), developed in the 70’s
to address the battle field and disaster recovery communication requirements. PRNET was
totally asynchronous and was based on a completely distributed architecture. It handled
datagram traffic reasonably well, but did not offer efficient multimedia support. * /

Recently, under the WAMIS (Wireless Adaptive Mobile Information Systems) and Glomo
ARPA programs several mobile, multimedia, multihop (M3 ) wireless network architectures
have been developed, which require some form of synchronous, time division infrastructure.
The synchronous time frame leads to efficient multimedia support implementations.
However, it introduces more complexity and is less robust in the face of mobility and channel
fading. Clearly there are complexity vs performance tradeoffs in introducing various degrees
of synchronization into the network. Figure 1, shows the cellular model commonly used in
the wireless networks. A, B, C, and D are fixed base stations connected by a wired backbone.
Nodes 1 through 8 are mobile nodes. A mobile node is only one hop away from a base station.
Communications between two mobile nodes must be through fixed base stations and the wired
backbone.
 Figure 1: Conventional cellular networks (single-hop)
In parallel with (and separately from) the single hop cellular model, another type of model,
based on radio to radio packet multihopping, has been emerging to serve a growing number of
applications which rely on a fast deployable, wireless infrastructure. The classic examples are
battlefield communications and (in the civilian sector) disaster recovery (fire, earthquake) and
search and rescue. A recent addition to this set is the ‘‘adhoc’’ personal communications
network, which could be rapidly deployed on a campus, for example, to support collaborative
computing and access to the Internet during special events (concerts, festivals etc).
Multihopping through wireless repeaters strategically located on campus permits to reduce
battery power and to increase network capacity. More precisely, by carefully limiting the power
of radios, we conserve battery power. Furthermore, we also cause less interference to other
transmissions further away; this gives the additional benefit of ‘‘spatial reuse’’ of channel
spectrum, thus increasing the capacity of the system. Interestingly, the multihop requirement
may also arise in cellular networks. If a base station fails, a mobile node may not be able to
access the wired network in a single hop. For example, in Figure 2, if base station B fails, node
4 must access base stations A or C through node 2 or node 5 which act as wireless multihop
repeaters.

Figure 2: A multihop situation occurs when base station B fails.

In order to support multimedia traffic, the wireless network layer must guarantee QoS
(band- width and delay) to real time traffic components. Our approach to provide QoS
to multimedia consists of the following two steps:

(a) partitioning of the multihop network into clusters, so that controlled,

accountable bandwidth sharing can be
accomplished in each cluster;
(b) establishment of Virtual Circuits with QoS guarantee.
//*The objective of the clustering algorithm is to partition the network into several
clusters. Optimal cluster size is dictated by the tradeoff between spatial reuse of the
channel (which drivestoward small sizes), and delay minimization (which drives
towards large sizes). Other constraints also apply, such as power consumption and
geographical layout. Cluster size is controlled through the radio transmission power.
For the cluster algorithm, we have so far assumed that transmission power is fixed and
is uniform across the network.
Within each cluster, nodes can communicate with each other in at most two
hops. The clusters can be constructed based on node ID. The following algorithm
partitions the multihop network into some non-overlapping clusters. We make the
following operational assumptions underlying the construction of the algorithm in a
radio network. These assumptions are common to most radio data link protocols.
A1: Every node has a unique ID and knows the IDs of its 1-hop neighbors. This
can be provided by a physical layer for mutual location and identification of
radio nodes.
A2: A message sent by a node is received correctly within a finite time by all its 1-
hop neighbors.
A3: Network topology does not change during the algorithm execution.
We can find from this algorithm that each node only broadcasts one cluster message
before the algorithm stops, and the time complexity is O(|V |) where V is the set of
nodes. The clustering algorithm converges very rapidly. In the worst case, the
convergence is linear in the total number of nodes. Consider the topology in Figure 3.
After clustering, in Figure 4,we can find six clusters in the system, which are
{1,2}, {3,4,11}, {5,6,7,8,9}, {10,12,13},{14,15,16,17}, {18,19,20}. To prove the
correctness of the algorithm we have to show that: 1) every node eventually determines
its cluster; 2) in a cluster, any two nodes are at most two hops away; 3) the algorithm
terminates.

12
13 14
11
10 16

20
19 18

Figure 3: System topology

 Figure 4: Clustering *//

Mobile File System:=>

Designed for a mobile device, phone or smart card
• File system─ a basic middleware which glues applications to an OS
• Defined as a method of organizing and storing files on a storage device at computer or a
mobile device
For the files, which may not be present on a single storage device
• Files may be distributed as in case of a distributed file system
• Present at different nodes in a network system
Consists of a master file which is the root directory
• Master file Stores all file headers
• A header contains description about a file
The second layer after the master file consists of dedicated files (directories) at the
branches
• Dedicated file holds file groupings
• Each dedicated file may further have dedicated files and/or elementary files as branches
The elementary files are at third layer
• The elementary file holds the file header and the file data
Scalability (scalability in case of mobile file system means that the system should adjust
the limits of file sizes and the number of files in the storage device as per the available
memory capacity) . Support for defined semantics for sharing of files even in case of
network failure
Support for disconnected operations and provision for reintegration of data from
disconnected clients or server. High performance through client-side persistent caching
Provision for replication at server (Replication is defined as a process of repeating, making
and offering a new copy of earlier ones)
 • Replication by server means that server repeats and offers (broadcasts) the set of
records using broadcast disk model) . Security, access control, authentication, and
encryption
Continuous operation even in case of partial failure of network connectivity (Partial
failure means disconnection between server and a few clients) . Network which adapts
to the bandwidth available at a given instant
• An application performance improves if the file system adapts to the bandwidth
variations

Overview of Coda File System:=>

Coda, a descendant of the Andrew File System, offers continued access to data in the face of
server and network failures.
Coda is designed for an environment consisting of a large collection of untrusted Unix clients
and a much smaller number of trusted Unix file servers.
Each Coda client has a local disk and can communicate with the servers over a high
bandwidth network. Clients view Coda as a single, location-transparent shared Unix file
system. The Coda namespace is mapped to individual
file servers at the granularity of subtrees called volumes. At each client, a cache manager
(Venus) dynamically obtains and caches data as well as volume mappings.
Coda uses two distinct, but complementary, mechanisms to achieve high availability. Both
mechanisms rely on an optimistic replica control strategy. This offers the highest degree of
availability, since data can be updated in any network partition. The system ensures detection
and confinement of conflicting updates after their occurence, and provides mechanisms to
help users recover from such conflicts.

Server Replication
The first high-availability mechanism, server replication, allows volumes to have read-write
replicas at more than one server. The set of replication sites for a volume is its volume storage
group (VSG). The subset of a VSG that is currently accessible is a client’s accessible VSG
(AVSG). The performance cost of server replication is kept low by callback-based caching at
clients, and through the use of parallel access protocols. Modifications at a Coda client are
propagated in parallel to all AVSG sites, and eventually to missing VSG sites.
Disconnected Operations in Mobile Computing:=>
Disconnected operations refer to the ability of a mobile computing system to continue
functioning and providing useful services even when network connectivity is temporarily
unavailable. This capability is crucial for maintaining productivity and ensuring data consistency
in environments where network access is intermittent or unreliable. Here’s an overview of
disconnected operations, their challenges, and strategies to manage them:

Key Concepts:

1. Caching:
 Data Caching: Before disconnection, relevant data is cached locally on the
mobile device. This ensures that the user has access to necessary information
even without network connectivity.
 Write Caching: Changes made to data during disconnection are temporarily
stored locally. Once the device reconnects, these changes are synchronized with
the central server.
2. Replication:
 Data Replication: Copies of critical data are replicated on the mobile device. This
ensures that the user can continue to access and modify this data even when
disconnected.
 Conflict Resolution: Mechanisms are implemented to handle conflicts that may
arise when changes made during disconnection are synchronized with the
central repository.
3. Synchronization:
 Deferred Synchronization: Synchronization of changes made during
disconnection occurs once the device reconnects to the network. Efficient
synchronization protocols are essential to ensure data consistency and integrity.
 Bi-directional Synchronization: Ensures that both the mobile device and the
central server are updated with the latest changes once connectivity is restored.
Challenges:

1. Data Consistency:
 Ensuring data consistency between the mobile device and the central server is a
significant challenge, particularly when multiple devices might be working on the
same data set.
 2. Conflict Resolution:

 Conflicts can arise when changes made during disconnection differ from those
made by other users or systems. Effective conflict resolution strategies are
necessary to reconcile these differences.

3. Resource Management:
 Mobile devices often have limited resources, such as storage capacity and
battery life. Efficient caching and replication strategies must be implemented to
manage these constraints.

4. Security:
 Ensuring the security of cached and replicated data is crucial, especially when
dealing with sensitive information. Encryption and access control measures must
be in place to protect data during disconnection.
Strategies for Managing Disconnected Operations:

1. Optimized Caching:
 Implement intelligent caching algorithms that prioritize the caching of frequently
accessed and critical data. This minimizes the impact of disconnection on user
productivity.
2. Efficient Synchronization Protocols:
 Use robust synchronization protocols that minimize data transfer overhead and
efficiently handle conflict resolution. Delta synchronization, which transfers only
the changes rather than entire data sets, can be particularly effective.
3. Conflict Detection and Resolution:
 Implement automated conflict detection mechanisms that identify discrepancies
between local and central data upon reconnection. Use resolution policies, such
as last-write-wins, user intervention, or versioning, to manage conflicts.
4. User Interface Design:
 Design user interfaces that clearly indicate connectivity status and provide
feedback on data synchronization progress. This helps users understand the
state of their data and take appropriate actions if needed.
 5. Security Measures:
 Ensure that data cached or replicated on the mobile device is encrypted and
protected by strong authentication mechanisms. This safeguards sensitive
information during periods of disconnection.
Examples of Disconnected Operations:

1. Email Clients:
 Many email clients allow users to read, write, and delete emails while offline.
These changes are synchronized with the email server once connectivity is
restored.
2. Document Editing:
 Applications like Google Docs and Microsoft Office 365 enable users to edit
documents offline. Changes are synced with the cloud once the device
reconnects.
3. Database Access:
 Mobile applications that require access to databases often implement local
databases that sync with the central database when connectivity is available.
This ensures continuous access to critical data.
4. File Synchronization Services:
 Services like Dropbox and OneDrive provide offline access to files. Users can
work on files offline, and changes are synchronized when the device reconnects
to the internet.