Adaptive Middleware Architecture for Group Communication Activities

Abstract

In wide-group collaborative activities, adaptive communication is required. Maintaining the reliable connection and ensuring the minimum quality are important in the event of a sudden unexpected change in communication and available resources. Within wireless environment, these issues are addressed in the context of Emergency rescue system carried out by mobile devices and robots during calamities or disaster. For this kind of scenario, this paper proposes an adaptive middleware to support reconfigurable, reliable group communications. In our middleware, context information such as energy consumption, communication loss, etc. are monitored and in case of dynamic change, an adaptive solution will be executed by low level network management. But if there is no solution at the low level, it triggers the higher level for appropriate adaptation. The paper describes the functionalities of middleware modules used to monitor, analyze, decide and adapt in case of evolution with illustrative examples. We apply this work to a Crisis Management System (CMS) within the context of the French RTRA project (ROSACE).