Location-oriented multimedia

Location-oriented multimedia describes the integration of location-awareness technology and mobile multimedia applications. Application mobility is targeted at users rather than hosts. Since much complex execution and user interface state is set up in the course of application sessions, it is useful to be able to retain this transparently after moving an application. Distributed multimedia complicates this problem since many users can be involved, each with distributed media sources and sinks connected to one another. These communication channels must he reestablished after movement. The authors first present a flexible framework, the components of which provide the building blocks for a wide range of location-oriented application support architectures. The issues of location awareness, use of mobile agents, mobile multimedia endpoints, mobile object location, and communication systems are addressed. Second, the authors present a specific architecture that integrates these components to support location-oriented multimedia. In this architecture, mobile agents are used as controllers of multimedia sessions. The mobile agent system has been made location-aware so that applications can move to user locations and even follow users. Mobile multimedia endpoints support the reestablishment of distributed multimedia streams after movement.