System Architecture and Strategies for the Exchange of structured multimedia Data in the Context of mobile Visualization

In mobile systems, the mobility of users, devices, and information produces new challenges for processing globally distributed information. This fact requires a new architecture for selection, access and exchange of information in a mobile computing environment. In the project MOVI, a new architecture is developed which enables applications on mobile computers to transparently exchange multimedia objects with applications on stationary servers via the Object Bus. In this paper, we focus our attention on the framework architecture and components of the Mobility Information Center which fave the common problems of mobile computing like limited bandwith, end systems with limited resources and frequent disconnecting. They are designed to efficiently use the available resources and to minimize this problems. The basic idea of this paper is the integration of object specific methods of data reduction and level-of-detail, by adaption of transfer to given Quality-of-Service parameters, and by data compression. In contrast to previous studies on mobile computing, all these methods are influenced by contexts like local resources, available communication channels, and user preferences.