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Kassinen O (2007)
Connectivity and session management for networked mobile applications.
M.Sc. thesis, Department of Electrical and Information Engineering, University of Oulu, Finland.

Mobile applications utilising wireless networks are growing in popularity as increasingly capable terminals and advanced networking technologies emerge. In order to provide a seamless user experience, applications must be able to rely on an intelligent mobile middleware that hides the complexity of underlying technologies and allows developers to solve application-specific problems instead. A middleware should take care of generic networking functionality such as distribution of context information, management of user communities, signalling for sessions, interaction with content-licensing services, and management of the terminal’s networking resources. This thesis focuses on two major components of a prototype peer-to-peer networking middleware: a solution for connectivity management and another for session management. First, the connectivity management solution is discussed. The solution formalises cross-layer resource optimisation and employs upgradeable state machines to make connectivity selections based on versatile context data and user preferences. The aims are to provide always the best connection for different communications and keep the system easily extensible. Second, the session management solution is discussed. The solution enables installation of missing software dynamically on the user’s terminal when another user proposes a mutual application session. This greatly increases users’ possibilities to initiate sessions with each other. The solution has also implications on commercial mobile content distribution. In this thesis, design principles behind each of the novel solutions are studied, their prototype implementations are evaluated on the Symbian smartphone platform, and they are contrasted with existing technologies. A lightweight Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) stack has also been implemented as a component for the middleware. Future work concerning the connectivity and session management solutions includes evaluation of the technologies in more realistic settings than was possible within the work for this thesis.

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