Mobile Computing in Digital Ecosystems: Design Issues and Challenges

In this paper we argue that the set of wireless, mobile devices (e. g., portable telephones, tablet PCs, GPS navigators, media players) commonly used by human users enables the construction of what we term a "digital ecosystem", i.e., an ecosystem constructed out of so-called "digital organisms" (see below), that can foster the development of novel distributed services. In this context, a human user equipped with his/her own mobile devices, can be though of as a "digital organism" (DO), a subsystem characterized by a set of peculiar features and resources it can offer to the rest of the ecosystem for use from its peer DOs. The internal organization of the DO must address issues of management of its own resources, including power consumption. Inside the DO and among DOs, peer-to-peer interaction mechanisms can be conveniently deployed to favor resource sharing and data dissemination. Throughout this paper, we show that most of the solutions and technologies needed to construct a digital ecosystem are already available. What is still missing is a framework (i.e., mechanisms, protocols, services) that can support effectively the integration and cooperation of these technologies. In addition, in the following we show that that framework can be implemented as a middleware subsystem that enables novel and ubiquitous forms of computation and communication. Finally, in order to illustrate the effectiveness of our approach, we introduce some experimental results we have obtained from preliminary implementations of (parts of) that subsystem.