CS 6910 – Pervasive Computing

Section 0.A:
Introduction to Pervasive
Computing
Dr. Leszek Lilien
Department of Computer Science
Western Michigan University
Slides based on the article “Pervasive Computing: Vision and
Challenges”
by Prof. M. Satyanarayanan, Carnegie Mellon University,
IEEE Personal Communications, 2001
[Possible mistakes and omissions are all mine. – LTL]
Slides are © 2007 by Leszek T. Lilien
Requests to use original slides for non-profit purposes will be gladly granted upon a written
request.
 1. Introduction
 Vision of pervasive computing /ubiquitous
computing [Mark Weiser, 1991]
 ‘‘The most profound technologies are those that
disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of
everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.’’

The essence of that vision:

Creation of environments saturated with computing and
communication capabilities, yet gracefully integrated with
human users
 A vision too far ahead of its time (1991)

The required hardware technology simply did not
exist
 The implementation attempted by Weiser and his
colleagues at Xerox PARC fell short
Based on: M. Satyanarayanan, “Pervasive Computing: Vision and Challenges,” IEEE Personal Communications, © 2007 by Leszek T. Lilien 2
Introduction (2)

 Critical hardware elements of pervasive computing

are now (2001) available
 Are now viable commercial products
 Examples:

Handheld computers / wearable computers

Wireless LANs

Sensing devices

Control appliances
 We can begin the quest for pervasive computing vision.

 Examples of pervasive computing projects

 At universities:

Project Aura at Carnegie Mellon / Endeavour at UC Berkeley

Oxygen at MIT / Portolano at Washington
 In the industry:

AT&T Research in Cambridge, U.K.

IBM TJ Watson Research Center
Based on: M. Satyanarayanan, “Pervasive Computing: Vision and Challenges,” IEEE Personal Communications, © 2007 by Leszek T. Lilien 3
Introduction (3)

 The goal of this paper:

Understand the challenges in computer
systems research posed by pervasive
computing
 Outline:
 Relationship of pervasive computing to the
closely-related fields of distributed systems and
mobile computing
 Two pervasive computing scenarios

Why they are fiction rather than fact today.
 Selected key research problems

With focus on computer systems issues
 Avoiding other areas important to pervasive computing

E.g., human-computer interaction, expert systems,
software agents
Based on: M. Satyanarayanan, “Pervasive Computing: Vision and Challenges,” IEEE Personal Communications, © 2007 by Leszek T. Lilien 4
 2. Related Fields:
Pervasive Computing vs.
Distributed Systems & Mobile
 Computing
Evolutionary history of pervasive computing
 Distributed systems (DIST)
 Mobile computing (MOBI)

[LL:] Ad hoc systems is MOBI’s superset, VANs – its subset
 Pervasive computing (PERV)
 Technical problems in PC
 “Old” problems - already studied & solved at earlier
evolution steps

Some earlier solutions apply directly for pervasive
computing

Some earlier solutions are inadequate for pervasive
computing
 New problems - no obvious mapping to problems studied at
earlier evolution steps
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Pervasive Computing vs. Distributed Systems & Mobile Computing (2)

 Next:
 Sort out complex intellectual relationship

Between problems/solutions for DIST, MOBI,
PERV
 Develop a taxonomy of research issues for
each phase of the evolution (DIST -> MOBI ->
PERV)

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Pervasive Computing vs. Distributed Systems & Mobile Computing (3)

2.1. Distributed Systems

 Distributed Systems
 Any computers connected by any networks

[The paper: Intersection of personal computers and
LANs]
 Research from the mid-1970’s through the early
1990’s

Created a conceptual framework and algorithmic base
 Enduring value in all work involving >= 2 computers
connected by a network — whether mobile or static, wired
or wireless, sparse or pervasive

 Solutions from DIST

 Span many areas that are foundational to
pervasive computing
 Well codified in textbooks (e.g.,: [8, 19, 20])
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Distributed Systems (2)

 Specific subarea solutions for DIST

 Remote communication

Incl. protocol layering, remote procedure call [3], use of
timeouts, use of end-to-end arguments in placement of
functionality [28]
 Fault tolerance

Incl. atomic transactions, distributed and nested
transactions, two-phase commit [13]
 High availability

Incl. optimistic and pessimistic replica control [9],
mirrored execution [4], optimistic recovery [37]
 Remote information access

Incl. caching, function shipping, distributed file systems,
distributed databases [30]
 Security

Incl. encryption-based mutual authentication and
privacy [23]
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Pervasive Computing vs. Distributed Systems & Mobile Computing (5)

2.2. Mobile Computing

 Mobile Computing

The early 1990s - full-function laptops + wireless LANs

Early mobile computing systems:
A distributed system with mobile clients

[LL:] Current mobile computing systems:
Any nodes can be mobile
 Solutions from MOBI

Many basic principles of DIST design continued to apply to MOBI
BUT

Four key constraints of mobility required specialized techniques
[31] for MOBI:

Unpredictable variation in network quality

Lowered trust and robustness of mobile elements

Limitations on local resources imposed by weight and size
constraints

Concern for battery power consumption

 Mobile computing - still a very active and evolving field of

research

Awaits codification in textbooks (as of 2000)
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Mobile Computing (2)

 Specific subarea solutions for MOBI

 Mobile networking

Incl. mobile IP [2], ad hoc protocols [27], techniques for
improving TCP performance in wireless networks [1, 5]
 Mobile information access

Incl. disconnected operation [17], bandwidth-adaptive
file access [21], selective control of data consistency
[38, 39]
 Support for adaptive applications

Incl. transcoding by proxies [12], adaptive resource
management [24]
 System-level energy saving techniques

Incl. energy-aware adaptation [11], variable-speed
processor scheduling [45], energy-sensitive (=adaptive)
memory management [18].
 Location sensitivity

Incl. location sensing [42, 43], location-aware (=adaptive)
system behavior [32, 35, 41]
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2.3. Pervasive Computing

 Pervasive Computing
 Recall:
Pervasive computing environment - one saturated
with computing & communication capability, yet
so gracefully integrated with users that it
becomes a ‘‘technology that disappears’’
 Since motion is an integral part of everyday life,
PERV must support mobility

Otherwise, a user will be acutely aware of the
technology by its absence when she moves
Hence, research in pervasive computing
subsumes that of mobile computing
BUT …

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Pervasive Computing (2)

…
 Research in pervasive computing goes

much further

PERV includes four additional research thrusts
 Effective Use of Smart Spaces
 Invisibility
 Localized Scalability
 Masking Uneven Conditioning

See Figure 1 (next slide)

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Pervasive Computing (3)
 Figure 1: Taxonomy of Computer Systems Research Problems
in PERV
1) New problems are
encountered as one moves
from left to right in this
figure.

2) Solution of many
previously-encountered
problems becomes more
complex.
As the modulation symbols
suggest, this increase in
complexity is multiplicative
rather than additive
it is very much more difficult to
design and implement a
pervasive computing system
than a simple distributed system
of comparable robustness and
maturity.

Note:This figure describes

logical relationships, not
temporal ones.
The evolution of research effort over
time has loosely followed this
picture
BUT
There have been cases where 13
Based on: M. Satyanarayanan, “Pervasive Computing: Vision and Challenges,” IEEE Personal Communications, © 2007 by Leszek T. Lilien
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Pervasive Computing (4)

2.3.1) Effective Use of Smart Spaces

 A space:

An enclosed area
 E.g., a meeting room or corridor
OR:

A well-defined open area
 E.g., a courtyard or a city square
 Smart space = space with embedding computing
infrastructure

E.g., smart space within buildings
 Created by embedding computing infrastructure within
building infrastructure
 Smart space brings together two worlds disjoint
until now [16]:

Physical space (physical world)

Cyberspace

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Pervasive Computing (5)

1) Effective Use of Smart Spaces – cont.

 The fusion of physical world (PHYS) and cyber-
world (CYB) enables sensing and control of one
world by the other
 Example of sensing and control of PHYS by CYB

Automatic adjustment of heating, cooling and lighting
levels in a room based on an occupant’s electronic
profile (incl. presence patterns)
 Example of sensing and control of CYB by PHYS
(the other direction)

Software on a user’s computer may behave differently
depending on where the user is currently located
 Note:
Smartness may extend to individual objects,
whether located in a smart space or not

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Pervasive Computing (6)

2.3.2) Invisibility
 The ideal expressed by Weiser: complete
disappearance of pervasive computing technology
from a user’s consciousness = invisible computing
 A reasonable approximation: minimal user
distraction ([LTL:] = minimal visibility)

If a PERV environment continuously meets user
expectations and rarely presents him with surprises, it
allows him to interact almost at a subconscious level [46]
BUT:
 Getting too close to the ideal might not be perfect:

A (small) degree of visibility might be needed


([LTL:] I hope that abobe I correctly interpret the following
text:
“At the same time, a modicum of anticipation may be
essential to avoiding a large unpleasant surprise later —
much as pain alerts a person to a potentially serious
future problem in a normally-unnoticed body part.”)
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2.3.3) Localized Scalability

 Basic model of pervasive computing interactions:

User’s personal computing space (UPCS)

User’s surroundings (US)

Interactions between UPCS & US

 Scalability problems in pervasive computing


The smarter is the space, the larger is interaction
intensity
 This has severe bandwidth, energy and distraction
implications for a wireless mobile user.

The more users in the smart space the more interactions

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Pervasive Computing (8)

3) Localized Scalability – cont.

 Scalability research

Previous work typically ignored physical distance
 A web server or file server should ignore distance

Handle as many clients as possible, regardless of
whether they are located next door or overseas

Scalability in PERV must consider physical distance
 Interaction density has to fall off with distance

Otherwise both the user and his computing system will
be overwhelmed by distant interactions that are of
little relevance
 A mobile user far from home will still generate some
distant interactions with sites relevant to him

But the preponderance of his interactions will be local

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Pervasive Computing (9)

3) Localized Scalability – cont.

 Good PERV design: scalability achieved by
severely reducing distant interactions

Like the inverse square laws of nature
 .g., the inverse square law for gravitation)

This directly contradicts the current ‘‘death of
distance’’ ethos of the Internet

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Pervasive Computing (10)

2.3.4) Masking Uneven Conditioning


‘‘Smartness’’ of different spaces varies significantly
(“The rate of penetration of pervasive computing technology into the infrastructure
will vary considerably […]”)


Well-equipped conference room, office, or classroom
smarter than other locations

Space smartness depends on:

Technical factors

How well the space is saturated with smart devices

Non-technical factors

Organizational structure, economics and business
models, …


Uniform ‘‘smartness’’ of spaces is years or decades
away (if ever achieved)

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Pervasive Computing (11)

4) Masking Uneven Conditioning – cont.

 Differences in ‘‘smartness’’ can be distracting

Can detract from the goal of invisible pervasive
computing
 One idea: Reduce the amount of variation in
smartness seen by a user
 Example implementation of the idea:
User’s personal computing space (UPCS)
compensates for ‘‘dumbness’’ of its environments

E.g., a laptop masks the absence of wireless coverage
 The laptop notices me leaving the CEAS building and
downloads my mail as I leave the area covered by CEAS
hot spots
 I can read my new mail at a restaurant without a hot spot

Complete compensation (achieving complete invisibility)
may be impossible
 But reduced variability of space smartness within reach

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3. Example Scenarios

 What would it be like to live in a world with

pervasive computing?
 Two hypothetical ‘‘look and feel’’ scenarios
follow
 Deliberately chosen simple scenarios that appear
feasible soon (in just a few years)

Examples use [CMU’s] Aura (
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~aura/) as the pervasive
computing system
 But the illustrated concepts are of broad relevance

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Example Scenarios (2)

3.1) Scenario 1

Jane is at Gate 23 in the Pittsburgh airport, waiting for her
flight.

She has edited many large documents, and would like to use
her wireless connection to e-mail them. Unfortunately,
bandwidth is miserable since many passengers at Gate 23
and nearby gates are surfing the web.

Aura observes that at the current bandwidth Jane won’t be
able to finish sending her documents before her flight
departs.

Consulting the airport network’s flight schedule service, Aura
discovers that wireless bandwidth is excellent at Gate 15, and
that there are no departing or arriving flights at nearby gates
for 30 min.

Aura displays a dialog box on Jane’s screen suggesting that
she goes to Gate 15, which is only three minutes away. It also
asks her to prioritize her e-mail, so that the most critical
messages are transmitted first.

Jane accepts Aura’s advice and walks to Gate 15. She
watches CNN on the TV there until Aura informs her that it is
close to being done with her messages, and that she can
start walking back.

Jane starts walking back to Gate 23.

The last message is transmitted during her walk,
Based on: M. Satyanarayanan, “Pervasive Computing: Vision and Challenges,” IEEE Personal Communications,
and she is
© 2007 by Leszek T. Lilien 24
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Example Scenarios (3)
3.2) Scenario 2

Fred is in his office, frantically preparing for a meeting at which
he will give a presentation and a software demonstration. The
meeting room is a 10-minute walk across campus.

It is time to leave, but Fred is not quite ready. He grabs his
PalmXXII wireless handheld computer & walks out of the door.

Aura transfers the state of his work from his desktop to his
handheld, & allows him to make edits using voice commands
during his walk.

Aura infers where Fred is going from his calendar & the campus
location tracking service. It downloads the presentation & the
demonstration software to the projection computer, & warms up
the projector.

Fred finishes his edits just before he enters the meeting room.

As he walks in, Aura transfers his final changes to the projection
computer.

As the presentation proceeds, Fred is about to display a slide
with highly sensitive budget information. Aura senses that this
might be a mistake: the room’s face detection and recognition
capability indicates that there are some unfamiliar faces present.
It therefore warns Fred.

Realizing that Aura is right, Fred skips the slide. He moves on to
other topics and ends on a high note, leaving the audience
impressed by his polished presentation.
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Example Scenarios (4)

3.3) Missing capabilities needed for implementing PERV

 Scenarios embody many key ideas in PERV

 Scenario 1 shows importance of:


Proactivity
 Jane able to e-mail her work only because Aura predicts
(estimates) how long the whole process would take
 Jane able to begin walking back to her departure gate
before transmission completes because Aura looks ahead
on her behalf

Combining knowledge from different layers of the system
 Information on wireless congestion comes from a low level
of the system
 Knowledge of boarding time is a high-level (application- or
user-level) information
 Aura helps Jane only by combining these disparate pieces of
knowledge

Smart space
 Aura is able to obtain from the smart environment
information on wireless conditions at other gates, flight
arrival/departure times at different gates, and distances
between gates
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Example Scenarios (5)
 Missing capabilities needed for implementing PERV – cont. 1
 Scenario 2 illustrates importance of:

Moving execution state effortlessly across diverse platforms
 Moving from a desktop to a handheld machine
 Moving from the handheld to a projection computer

Self-tuning (=automatically adjusting behavior to fit circumstances)
 Ability to edit on the handheld using speech input rather than
keyboard and mouse.

Proactivity
 Inferring that Fred is headed for the room across campus,
warming up the projector, transferring the presentation and
demonstration
 Anticipating that the budget slide might be displayed next,
and sensing danger by combining this knowledge with the
inferred presence of strangers in the room.

Smart space
 The location tracking and online calendar services are what
enable Aura to infer where Fred is heading
 The software-controlled projector enables warmup ahead of

time
 The camera-equipped room with continuous face recognition

is key to warning Fred about the anticipated©privacy

Based on: M. Satyanarayanan, “Pervasive Computing: Vision and Challenges,” IEEE Personal Communications,
violation 27
2007 by Leszek T. Lilien
Pervasive Computing vs. Distributed Systems & Mobile Computing (23)
Example Scenarios (6)

 Missing capabilities needed for implementing PERV – cont. 2

 Perhaps the biggest surprise:
How simple and basic are all the component
technologies in these scenarios

The hardware technologies are available (in 2001!)
 Laptops, handhelds, wireless communication, software-
controlled appliances, room cameras, …

Software technologies have also available (in 2001!)
 Location tracking, face recognition, speech recognition, online
calendars, ...
 So why then do these scenarios seem like science
fiction today? (in 2001 and still in 2006)

The answer: The whole is much greater than the sum of its
parts
 The real challenge is in the seamless integration of h/w s/w
technologies into a PERV system
 Difficult problems to solve:

Architecture / Component synthesis / System-level
engineering
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4. Solving Difficult Problems (“Drilling

Down”)
 Drilling down – solving the above difficult problems

 Practical realization of PERV requires solving many

difficult design & implementation problems
 Let’s look at some of these problems at the next
level of detail (“Our goal is only to convey an impressionistic
picture of the road ahead.”)

 No claim of completeness or exclusiveness


Set of topics is merely a sampling of the problem space:
 4.1. User Intent / 4.2. Cyber Foraging

 4.3. Adaptation Strategy / 4.4. High-level Energy

Management
 4.5. Client Thickness / 4.6. Context Awareness

 4.7. Balancing Proactivity and Transparency

 4.8. Privacy and Trust / 4.9. Impact on Layering

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Drilling Down - The Difficult Problems (2)

 Drilling down - The difficult problems – cont. 1

 Assumed:
Each user immersed in a user’s personal
computing space (UPCS) that accompanies him
everywhere and mediates all interactions with the
pervasive computing elements in her surroundings

UPCS likely implemented on a body-worn or handheld
computer (or a collection of these acting as a single
entity)
 UPCS is a ‘‘client’’ of its PERV environment

Even though many of its interactions may be peer-to-
peer rather than strictly client-server
 Client needs to be quite sophisticated hence complex

As indicated by the discussion below

 Figure 2, illustrating the structure of an Aura client,

gives a concrete example of this complexity
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Drilling Down - The Difficult Problems (3)

 Figure 2: Structure of an Aura Client

This figure shows the components of
an Aura client and their logical
relationships.
The text in italics indicates the role
played by each component
Coda and Odyssey were created prior
to Aura, but are being modified
substantially to meet the demands of
pervasive computing
In the case of Odyssey, these changes
are sufficiently extensive that they
will result in Chroma, a replacement
Other components are being created
specifically for use in Aura
Such as Prism and Spectra
Additional components are likely to be
added over time
Since Aura is relatively early in its
design at the time of this writing
(2001)
Server and infrastructure support for
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Drilling Down - The Difficult Problems (4)

 4.1) User Intent


Proactivity requires that a PERV system tracks user intent

Otherwise, almost impossible to determine which system
actions help rather than hinder the user.

E.g., suppose a user is viewing video over a network
connection whose bandwidth suddenly drops

System choices:

a) reduce the fidelity of the video,

b) pause briefly to find another higher-bandwidth
connection, or

c) terminate the task?

Correct choice depends on what the user is trying to
accomplish

Today’s systems are poor at capturing and exploiting user
intent

On the one hand: generic applications that have no idea
what the user is attempting to do

Offer little support for adaptation and proactivity

On the other hand: applications that try to anticipate user
intent but do so very badly

Gimmicks like the Microsoft ‘‘paperclip’’ often more annoying
than helpful
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Drilling Down - The Difficult Problems (5)
 User intent - some important research questions:

Can user intent be inferred, or does it have to be
explicitly specified?

In the latter case, is it statically specified (e.g., from a file)
or obtained on demand through dynamic interactions?

How is user intent represented internally? How is it
used?

How rich must this information be for it to be useful?
When and how is it updated? How do different layers of a
system access this knowledge?

How does one characterize accuracy of user intent
knowledge?

Is incomplete or imprecise knowledge of user intent still
useful? At what level of uncertainty is it better to ignore
such knowledge in making decisions?

Will the attempt to obtain intent to burdensome on
the user?

Will it hurt usability and performance unacceptably?

Is the benefit [of using user intent] worth the cost? How 34
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Drilling Down - The Difficult Problems (6)

 4.2) Cyber Foraging

 Two contradictory requirements for mobile devices:


Must be lightweight = small, light, with small and light battery
 Compromises computing capabilities

Must have powerful comp/comm capabilities
 Ever-growing expectations of mobile users

Well beyond capabilities of a lightweight mobile computer
 How to reconcile contradictory requirements?

Difficult to reconcile

Idea: use cyber foraging
 forage [fawr-ij] … 3. the act of searching for provisions of any
kind.
[cf. Dictionary.com]
 Cyber foraging:
Dynamically augment the computing resources of a
wireless mobile computer by exploiting wired hardware
infrastructure [LTL: of the surrounding smart space]

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 4.2. Cyber Foraging – cont.1
 Need infrastructure facilitating cyber foraging

Need smart public spaces
 Equipped with compute servers or data staging servers

Much as table lamps [or power outlets] are today
 Connected to the wired Internet through high-bandwidth
networks

‘‘Wasting’’ smart infrastructure when not in use
 We can afford this ‘‘waste’’ to improve user experience
 Could ensure that never wasted - always in use

E.g., run SETI program / sell time slices to others
 Surrogate of a mobile computer:
Hardware in the wired infrastructure temporarily
supporting cyber foraging for the mobile computer
 [LTL:] Compare this limited cyber foraging with
more extensive foraging (by employing helpers) in
opportunistic networks (oppnets). After we discuss
oppnets (soon), see how oppnets’ approach differs.37
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 4.2. Cyber Foraging – cont.2


A typical foraging scenario

Mobile computer (MC) enters a smart space

MC detects surrogates and negotiates their use

Communication with a surrogate via short-range wireless
P2P (peer-to-peer) technology

Surrogate is MC’s networking gateway to the Internet

When MC needs to perform an intensive computation
accessing a large volume of data, MC uses the surrogate

Surrogate performs computations for MC
OR

Surrogate services cache misses for MC

Lower latency, avoiding Internet delays

Surrogate caches data from the Internet on its local disk
during performing the computation
OR

Surrogate may have staged data ahead of time in
anticipation of the user’s arrival in the neighborhood

MC leaves the space

Its surrogate bindings are broken

Any data cached or staged for MC are discarded
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 Cyber foraging – some important research questions:

 How does one discover the presence of

surrogates?

Of the many proposed service discovery mechanisms
such as JINI, UPnP, and BlueTooth proximity detection,
which is best suited for this purpose? Can one build a
discovery mechanism that subsumes all of them for
greatest flexibility?
 How to handle the issue of trust?

How does one establish an appropriate level of trust in a
surrogate? What are useful levels of trust in practice?
How applicable and useful is the concept of caching trust
[29]? Can one amortize the cost of establishing trust
across many surrogates in a neighborhood?
 How is load balancing on surrogates done?

Is surrogate allocation based on an admission control
approach, or a best-effort approach? How relevant is
previous work on load balancing on networks of
workstations?
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 Cyber foraging – some important research questions – cont.

 How to handle the issue of staging?


In typical situations, how much advance notice does a
surrogate need for effective staging with minimal delay?
 Is this on the order of seconds, minutes or tens of

minutes? What implications does this requirement

have for the other components of a pervasive
computing system?
 What are the implications of cyber foraging for
scalability of smart fixed infrastructure?

How dense does the fixed infrastructure have to be to
avoid overloads during periods of peak demand?
 What is the system support needed for seamless
and minimally intrusive surrogate experience for a
user?

Which are the components of this support that must be
provided by MC, and which by the smart space?
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 4.3) Adaptation Strategy

Adaptation is necessary when there is a significant
mismatch between the supply and demand of a
resource

Examples of resources: wireless network bandwidth, energy,
computing cycles, memory, …

Three alternative adaptation strategies for adaptation
in PERV

Recall: UPCS is a client of a smart space (3 interacting entities)

UPCS = user’s personal computing space

Strategy 1 (reservation): Client can ask the environment for
guarantee of a certain level of a resource

Typically used by reservation-based QoS systems [22]

QoS – quality of service

This effectively increases the supply of a scarce resource to
meet the client’s demand
[LTL: Client able to reserve is privileged in some sense]

Strategy 2 (reduction): Client can guide applications in
changing their behavior so that they use less of a scarce
resource

This change usually reduces the user-perceived quality, or
fidelity, of an application

E.g., Odyssey [11, 24] uses this strategy
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 4.3. Adaptation Strategy –cont.

Three alternative strategies for adaptation in PERV – cont.

Strategy 3 (correction): Client can suggest a corrective
action to its user

If the user complies with it, resource supply will likely
(but without certainty) become adequate to meet
demand

E.g.., in Scenario 1, Aura advised Jane to walk to Gate 15
in order to obtain adequate wireless bandwidth.

Conceptually promising, but not implemented by any
real system yet (2001)

All three strategies are important in pervasive computing

Some smart spaces capable of accepting resource
reservations (Strategy 1 - reservation)

In some smart spaces [some] clients can’t reserve
resources — must ask applications to reduce their
fidelities (Strategy 2 - reduction)

Happens when space is uncooperative or resource-
impoverished

Corrective actions may be particularly useful when
reduction of fidelity is unacceptable (Strategy 3 -
correction)

Broaden the range of possibilities for adaptation by involving
the user
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 Adaptation Strategy – some research questions


How does a client choose the best adaptation
strategy?

What factors should a good decision procedure take into
account? How should different factors be weighted? What
role, if any, should the user play in making this decision? How
can smooth and seamless transitions between strategies be
ensured as a user moves between different spaces?

Reservation strategy might appear superior for a user

User neither required to accept lower fidelity nor perform a
corrective action
Is this true in all circumstances?

What are the hidden costs and ‘‘gotchas,’’ if any, in a widely-
deployed system using Strategy 2?

How will the implementation of a smart space honor
resource reservations?

What are the most appropriate admission control policies
when there are competing requests from multiple clients?
What resources, beside wireless network bandwidth, is it
meaningful and useful for a smart space to reserve? What
are the APIs and protocols necessary to negotiate these
reservations?
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 Adaptation Strategy – some research questions – cont.


Issues for corrective strategy

Is corrective adaptation practically feasible? Do users find it
intrusive or annoying? What is the best way to
communicate potential corrective actions to users? What
are the programming models and APIs necessary to support
corrective actions?

Legacy problem: Can existing applications use this
approach? If so, how substantial are the modifications to
them?

 Issues for reduction strategy


What are the different ways in which fidelity can be lowered
for a broad range of applications? Are existing APIs, such as
that of Odyssey [24], adequate?

How should those APIs and programming models be revised
based on extensive usage experience?

What is the negative impact of lowered fidelity on users and
how can this be minimized?
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 4.4) High-level Energy Management

Sophisticated software capabilities increase the
energy demand of an MC (= mobile computer)

Examples of sophisticated capabilities: as proactivity / self-
tuning

At the same time: pressure to make MCs lighter and
more compact places severe restrictions on battery
capacity

Growing consensus:

Advances in battery technology and low-power circuit design
cannot, by themselves, reconcile these opposing constraints

The higher levels of the system must also be involved [10,
25]

How does one involve the higher levels of a system in
energy management?

Example 1: Energy-aware memory management [18]

OS dynamically controls the amount of physical memory
that has to be refreshed

Example 2: Energy-aware adaptation [11]

Under OS control, individual applications switch to modes
of operation
Based on: M. Satyanarayanan, with
“Pervasive Computing: lower
Vision and Challenges,”fidelity and energy
IEEE Personal Communications, demand
© 2007 by Leszek T. Lilien 45
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 High-level Energy Management – some research

questions
 In what ways can the higher levels of a system contribute to
managing energy?

What are the relative strengths and weaknesses of these
approaches? When should one method be used in preference to
another?
 How does high-level energy management impact the goal of
invisibility in pervasive computing?

How intrusive or distracting to users are such techniques?
 Can knowledge of user intent be exploited in energy
management?

If so, how robust is this approach in the face of imperfection in this
knowledge?
 Can smart spaces and surrogates be used to reduce energy
demand on a mobile computer?

What are possible approaches, and what are their relative merits?
 What is the role of remote execution in extending battery life?

Under what circumstances does its energy savings exceed the
energy cost of wireless communication? Can a system predict these
savings and costs accurately enough in practice to make a
significant difference?
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 4.5) Client Thickness


Types of clients

Thick client = a powerful client

Thin client = a minimal client

Thick clients have many negative features from the user’s
viewpoint

Larger / heavier / with bigger & heavier battery / dissipate
more heat

Over time, physical size and weight of a thick client are
reduced

Due to improvements in VLSI and packaging technology

The same improvements shrinking thick clients
produce even smaller and lighter thin clients

Q: How powerful MC is needed for a pervasive
computing environment?

How much CPU power, memory, disk capacity, … does it
need?

The answer determines many of the key constraints
imposed on the hardware design of the client

A: For a user, a client can never be too powerful, too
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 4.5. Client Thickness – cont.1
 A wide range of client designs

One extreme: Ultra-thin clients
 Bare-bones devices


E.g., Infopad [6, 40], SLIM [33]
 Can’t operate in isolation

Little more than high-resolution displays connected
through high-bandwidth wireless links to nearby
compute servers

In-between: Midsize clients
 Handheld computers


E.g., PalmPilot
 Can operate in isolation
 But run a limited range of applications

Other apps run on compute servers of smart spaces

The other extreme: Full-function clients
 Wearable computers and laptops


E.g., the Navigator family of wearable computers [34],
laptops running as clients of the Coda File System [17]
 Capable of standalone or disconnected operation
 Make use of wireless connectivity when available
Not critically dependent on it
 “Pervasive Computing: Vision and Challenges,” IEEE Personal Communications,
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 4.5. Client Thickness – cont.2

 The minimum acceptable thickness of a client for a given

app:
Determined by the worst-case conditions under which the
app must run satisfactorily

A very thin client suffices if it has assured high-bandwidth,
low-latency wireless communication to nearby computing
infrastructure, and if batteries recharged/replaced easily

If in even a single location visited by a user these
assumptions do not hold, the client must be thick enough
to compensate at that location
 This is especially true for interactive applications

where crisp response is important

… continued...

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 4.5. Client Thickness – cont.3
 With a client of modest thickness, it may be possible to
preserve responsiveness by:

Handling simple cases locally & relying on remote
infrastructure only for more compute-intensive situations
OR:

Execute part of the application locally & ship a much-
reduced intermediate state over a weak wireless link to a
remote compute server for completion
 The hybrid mode of speech recognition in Odyssey [24] is an
example of this approach.
OR:

Client recognizes that a key assumption is not being met,
and alerts its user with a message
 Client could also suggest possible corrective actions

E.g., moving to a nearby location known “help” the application
 An extremely thin-client will be unsatisfactory for pervasive
computing in the foreseeable future

Due to uneven conditioning of environments
At the same time, considerable merit in not having to carry
or wear a client thicker than absolutely necessary
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 4.5. Client Thickness – some research questions:

 Can the concepts of client thickness and
environmental conditioning be quantified? Are
there ‘‘sweet spots’’ in the design space where a
modest increase in client thickness yields
considerable improvement in performance and
usability?

 Can a proactive system alert a user in a timely

manner before he leaves a benign environment for
a less hospitable one?

In that context, can an application be
transparently migrated between a thinner and a
thicker client whenever needed
 What are the kinds of applications for which such
migration is feasible and useful? What is the impact on
usability?

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 4.5. Client Thickness – some research questions – cont.
 Is it possible to build cost-effective modular
computers that can be physically reconfigured to
serve as the optimal mobile clients under diverse
environmental conditions?

Can a proactive system advise a user to
reconfigure when appropriate?
 E.g., knowing her travel plans, can such a system guide her in
configuring her system so that it is of adequate thickness at all
times?
 Can semi-portable infrastructure be carried with a
user to augment less hospitable environments?

E.g., in a poorly conditioned environment, can a
thin body-worn computer extend its capabilities
by wireless access to a full-function laptop
brought by the user?
 This is analogous to carrying both a briefcase and a wallet
when you travel; the briefcase is not physically on your person
at all times, but it is close enough to provide easy access to
things too large to fit in your wallet

Is this a usable and practical strategy to cope with52
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 4.6) Context Awareness
 Context-awareness is necessary for PERV to be minimally
intrusive

Context aware = cognizant of its user’s state and surroundings, and
modifying its behavior based on this information
 A user’s context

Can be quite rich

Some user’s attributes in user’s context:
Physical location / Physiological state (e.g., body temperature and
heart rate) /
Emotional state (e.g., angry, distraught, or calm) / Personal history /
Daily behavioral patterns / …

A human assistant given such context would make decisions
proactively
 Anticipating user needs

The assistant would typically not disturb the user at inopportune
moments except in an emergency
 Can a pervasive computing system emulate such a human assistant?
 Key challenge: obtaining information needed to function in a
context-aware manner

Desired information may be part of UPCS (user’s personal
computing space)
 E.g., UPCS has schedules, calendars, address books, to-do lists, …

More dynamic information has to be sensed in real time from the
user’s environment
 E.g., position, orientation, the identities of people nearby, locally
observable
Based on: M. Satyanarayanan, objects
“Pervasive Computing: and
Vision actions,
and Challenges,” IEEE emotional and physiological
Personal Communications, © 2007 by Leszek state,
T. Lilien … 53
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 4.6. Context Awareness – cont.
 Context Awareness – some research issues:

How is context represented internally? How is this
information combined with system and application state?
Where is context stored?
 Does it reside locally, in the network, or both?
What are the relevant data structures and algorithms?

How frequently does context information have to be
consulted? What is the overhead of using context? How to
keep this overhead low?

What are the minimal services from an environment to
provide to make context-awareness feasible? What are
reasonable fallback positions if an environment does not
provide such services? Is historical context useful?

What are the relative merits of different location-sensing
technologies?
 Under what circumstances should one be used in preference
to another?

Should location information be treated just like any other
context information, or should it be handled differently?
 Is historical context useful?
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 4.7) [LTL:] Proper Level of Transparency in

Proactivity [Paper: Balancing Proactivity and Transparency]

Transparency = invisibility

[LTL:] Proactivity can be visible or transparent
(invisible )

Visible when system asks user for specific behavior
to perform a proactive task

E.g., Aura asking Jane to go to Gate 15 or warning Fred
not to show slides with sensitive data (in Scenario 1)


Transparent when there is no system interaction
with user when system performs a proactive task

E.g., Aura warms up projector without asking Fred (in
Scenario 2)

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 4.7) [LTL:] Proactivity and Its Transparency [Paper: Balancing Proactivity and Transparency] –
cont.1


[LTL:] Visible system proactivity can annoy a user …

… if system gives a bad advice

Or the user just thinks that the advice is bad

… if system interrupts a user too often with advice

Annoyed even with the best advice

And prone to ignore it

[LTL:] Transparent system proactivity can annoy a
user too

E.g., if Aura warms up a projector in a wrong
room, and Fred has to wait for warm up in the
right room

If Aura told Fred in which room it watms up the projectoir
(visible), Fred would notice mistake &correct Aura’s
action
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 4.7) [LTL:] Proactivity and Its Transparency [Paper: Balancing Proactivity and Transparency] – cont.2


[LTL:] Hypothesis: Talking about “balancing
proactivity and transparency” (see the paper) seems
author’s mistake

Balancing of X an Y is needed only when:
 More X can be obtained by reducing Y AND More Y can be
obtained by reducing X

Here can have 100% proactivity with either 0% or 100%
transparency

[LTL:] Finding (“balancing”) proper level of
transparency for proactivity

If too little or too much of proactivity transparency annoys
a user
 => The goal of proactivity transparency is defeated

Need careful PERV design
 Finding the proper transparency level by:

System’s self-tuning

A mobile user’s need & tolerance for proactivity (UNTP)
are likely to be closely related to his level of expertise on
a task & his familiarity with his environment

A system that can infer UNTP by observing user behavior
& context is better positioned to find the proper balance 57
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 4.7) [LTL:] Proactivity and Its Transparency [Paper: Balancing Proactivity and Transparency] – cont3
 Historically, transparency (not just for proactivity) was the
ideal in system design

E.g., caching is attractive in distributed file systems because it
is completely transparent
 Ironically, sometimes users are hurt/annoyed by
complete transparency

E.g., servicing a cache miss on a large file over a low-
bandwidth wireless network — so slow that most users would
rather be asked first by the system if they really need the file

However, too many questions from file system can annoy the
user
That is, again annoyed by too low level of transparency

A solution to this dilemma (suggested by Coda File System
[21])
 On a cache miss, Coda consults an internally-maintained

user patience model to predict whether the user will not be

annoyed by a transparent fetch request
 If so, the fetch is handled transparently (user interaction is

suppressed)
 Many subtle problems arise in designing a system that
walks the fine line between annoying visibility &
inscrutable (hard to understand) transparency 58
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 4.7. Balancing Transparency in Proactivity – some

research problems:
 How are individual user preferences and tolerances specified
and taken into account?

Are these static or do they change dynamically?
 What cues can such a system use to determine if [LTL:]
transparency level is too low/high?

Is explicit interaction with the user to obtain this information
acceptable?

Or, would such explicit interaction to obtain be an annoyance
too?
 Can one provide systematic design guidelines to application
designers to help in this task?

Can one retrofit [transparency] balancing mechanisms into
existing applications?

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 4.8) Privacy and Trust

 Privacy is greatly complicated by PERV

Was already a thorny problem in DISTR and MOBI

 Some PERV mechanisms “spy” on user actions on

an almost continuous basis

E.g., location tracking, smart spaces, use of surrogates
 As a user becomes more dependent on PERV =>
PERV obtains more information about the user

I.e., about user’s movements, behavior patterns, habit, …
 Exploiting this information is critical to successful
proactivity & self-tuning

Unless use of information is strictly controlled, it can hurt
the user
 Illegitimate uses ranging from targeted spam to

blackmail.

Potential for serious loss of privacy may deter
knowledgeable users from using a PERV system

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 4.8) Privacy and Trust - cont.

 Mutual trust between infrastructure & users in

PERV

Greater reliance on infrastructure => users
must trust infrastructure to a considerable
extent

Conversely, the infrastructure needs to be
confident of the users’ identity and authorization
levels before responding to their requests
 It is a difficult challenge to establish this mutual trust
with minimal intrusiveness (= mimnimal visibility &
thus maximum transparency)

System identifies/authorizes users in intrusive
(visible) way

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 4.8. Privacy and Trust - cont

 Privacy and trust are likely to be enduring problems
in pervasive computing
 Privacy and trust – some research questions:

How does one strike the right balance between seamless
system behavior and the need to alert users to potential loss
of privacy?
 What are the mechanisms, techniques and design principles
relevant to this problem? How often should the system remind
a user that his actions are being recorded? When and how can
a user turn off monitoring in a smart space?

What are the authentication techniques best suited to PERV?
 Are password-based challenge-response protocols such as
Kerberos [36] adequate or are more exotic techniques such as
biometric authentication [15] necessary?
 What role, if any, can smart cards [14] play?

How does one express generic identities in access control?
 E.g., how does one express security constraints such as ‘‘Only
the person currently using the projector in this room can set its
lighting level?’’ Or: ‘‘Only employees of our partner companies
can negotiate QoS properties in this smart space?’’

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 4.9) Impact on Layering [of the System]

 A recurring theme in this paper: the merging of
information from diverse layers of a PERV system to
produce an effective response

E.g., Scenario 1 shows the value of combining low-level
resource information (network bandwidth) with high-level
context information (airport gate information)
 Proactivity and adaptation based on corrective actions
=> exposure of much more information across layers

Much more than is typical in systems today
 We want layering – it has benefits

Cleanly separates abstraction from implementation

Thus consistent with sound software engineering

Conducive to standardization

Encourages the creation of modular software components

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 4.9) Impact on Layering [of the System] – cont.

 Deciding how to decompose a complex system into
layers or modules is nontrivial

Remains very much an art rather than a science
 The two most widely-used guidelines for layering

Parnas’ principle of information hiding [26]

Saltzer et al.’s end-to-end principle[28]
Both developed long before pervasive computing
was conceived

Parnas’ - early 1970’s

Saltzer et al.’s - early 1980’s

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Drilling Down - The Difficult Problems (35)

 Impact on System Layering – some research questions:


How can the benefits of layering be preserved while
accommodating the needs of pervasive computing?

What is the impact of these accommodations on efficiency
and maintainability?

Are existing layers best extended for pervasive
computing by broadening their primary interfaces or
by creating secondary interfaces?

Such as the SNMP network management interface [7]?

When creating a new layer, are there systematic
guidelines we can offer to ensure compatibility with
the needs of pervasive computing?

How much harder is it to design and implement such a layer?

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5. Conclusion
 Pervasive computing will be a fertile source of
challenging research problems in computer systems
for many years to come

Solving these problems will require us:

To broaden our discourse on some topics, and

To revisit long-standing design assumptions in
others

To address research challenges in areas outside
computer systems, including:

Human-computer interaction

Esp. multi-modal interactions & human-centric h/w
designs

Software agents

Specific relevance to high-level proactive behavior

Expert systems and artificial intelligence

Esp. in the areas of decision making and planning

Capabilities from these areas will need to be
integrated with the PERV systems capabilities

Pervasive computing will thus be the crucible in which 66
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Conclusion – cont.

 When describing his vision, Weiser was fully aware

that attaining it would require tremendous creativity
and effort by many people, sustained over many
years
 The early decades of the 21st century will be a period
of excitement and ferment in PERV research
 New h/w technologies converge with research progress on
the many fundamental problems discussed in this paper
 Like the Frontier of the American West in the early
19th century, pervasive computing offers new
beginnings for the adventurous and the restless
 A rich open space where the rules have yet to be written and
the borders yet to be drawn

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References
 See the original paper:
 M. Satyanarayanan, “Pervasive Computing: Vision

and Challenges,” IEEE Personal Communications,

2001
 Available at:
 http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~aura/docdir/pcs01.pdf

Based on: M. Satyanarayanan, “Pervasive Computing: Vision and Challenges,” IEEE Personal Communications, © 2007 by Leszek T. Lilien 68
 End of Lecture 0:
Introduction to Pervasive
Computing