Maomao Wu

A context-aware middleware for applications in mobile Ad Hoc environments

Novel ubiquitous computing applications such as intelligent vehicles, smart buildings, and traffic management require special properties that traditional computing applications do not support, such as context-awareness, massive decentralisation, autonomous behaviour, adaptivity, proactivity, and innate collaboration. This paper presents a new computational model and middleware that reflect support for the required the properties. The sentient object model is proposed by the CORTEX¹ project to support the construction of ubiquitous applications. A flexible, run-time reconfigurable component-based middleware has been built to provide run-time support to engineer the sentient object programming paradigm. An application infrastructure using sentient objects to enable cooperation between autonomous and proactive vehicles has been implemented to demonstrate the appropriateness of the computational model and the validity of the middleware for pervasive mobile ad hoc computing.

An access control architecture for microcellular wireless IPv6 networks

This document introduces a novel access control architecture for publicly accessible wireless overlay networks. The architecture is designed to address the problems of ubiquitous Internet service provisioning within the city of Lancaster. The proposed access control mechanism is based on the concepts of secure user authentication, packet marking, and network-level packet filtering. The novelty of the architecture lies in its use of microcellular layer three networks to acquire fine grained access control in a link independent manner. The paper describes the concepts behind the access control architecture and demonstrates to what extent it addresses the security, performance and extensibility concerns of public access packet switched wireless networks.

Network layer access control for context-aware IPv6 applications

As part of the Lancaster GUIDE II project, we have developed a novel wireless access point protocol designed to support the development of next generation mobile context-aware applications in our local environs. Once deployed, this architecture will allow ordinary citizens secure, accountable and convenient access to a set of tailored applications including location, multimedia and context based services, and the public Internet. Our architecture utilises packet marking and network level packet filtering techniques within a modified Mobile IPv6 protocol stack to perform access control over a range of wireless network technologies. In this paper, we describe the rationale for, and components of, our architecture and contrast our approach with other state-of-the-art systems. The paper also contains details of our current implementation work, including preliminary performance measurements.

Real tournament - mobile context aware gaming for the next generation

With the recent advances in mobile networking, context‐aware computing, and sensor‐based computing, researchers and game designers are able to explore the potential of combining these new technologies to develop mobile, networked, context‐aware, augmented reality multiplayer games. As part of new research collaboration between Lancaster University, Cisco Systems, Microsoft Research and Orange – MIPv6 Systems Research Lab, such a mobile context‐aware multiplayer game is proposed and explored. The proposed game, Real Tournament, gathers real‐time contextual information, e.g. physical location and orientation, from the players and injects them into the game engine to generate game events.

An Access Control Architecture for Metropolitan Area Wireless Networks

This paper introduces a novel access control architecture for publicly accessible, wireless networks. The architecture was designed to address the requirements obtained from a case study of ubiquitous Internet service provisioning within the city of Lancaster. The proposed access control mechanism is based on the concepts of secure user authentication, packet marking, and packet filtering at the access routers. The paper demonstrates to what extent this token-based, soft-state access control mechanism improves security and robustness, and offers improved performance over that provided by existing approaches within roaming networks. Early indications show the access control mechanism can better be implemented through the use of active routers, in order to facilitate dynamic rollout and configuration of the system. In addition, extensions to Mobile IPv6 are proposed, which provide support for roaming users at a fundamental level.