An approach to Mobile Grid platforms for the development and support of complex ubiquitous applications

Several complex and time-critical applications require the existence of novel distributed, heterogeneous and dynamic platforms composed of a variety of fixed and mobile processing nodes and networks. Such platforms, that can be called Pervasive Mobile Grids, aim to merge the features of Pervasive Computing and High-performance Grid Computing onto a new emerging paradigm. In this Chapter we study a methodology for designing high-performance distributed computations, able to exploit the heterogeneity and dynamicity of Pervasive Grids, by expressing Adaptivity and Context Awareness directly at the application level. We describe a programming model approach, and we compare it with other existing research works in the field of Pervasive Mobile Computing, discussing the rationales of the requirements and the features of a novel programming model for the target platforms and applications. In order to exemplify the proposed methodology we introduce our evaluation framework ASSISTANT, and we provide some interesting future directions in this research field.