Experiences from developing a context management system applied to mobility
Résumé
Recent advances in electronic and automotive industries as well as in wireless telecommunication technologies have drawn a new picture where each vehicle became fully networked. In order to provide IP connectivity to on-board devices, the IETF has proposed the NEMO (NEtwork MObility) protocol. In this approach, a new device, the Mobile Router (MR), will take place in vehicles. It has to manage mobility and takes advantage of the surrounding wireless technology diversity to offer connectivity and reachability for all nodes in the mobile network as it moves. To be efficient, the MR has to take into account various contextual pa- rameters regarding the management of wireless network interfaces and the routing of the flows. Exchanging such a contextual information can be achieved easily through basic polling and broadcasting mechanisms. However, systems involving more than one MR and systems having hot sensor plugging capabilities will require more advanced techniques for ex- changing context information. In [2], we proposed to use a CMS (Context Management System) in order to process and exchange contextual infor- mation in a vehicular network. This paper describes our experience with the design and the implementation of a new CMS applied to mobility.