Research Challenges in Information Access and Dissemination in a Mobile Environment

• Main Authors: XU, Jianliang, ZHENG, Baihua, ZHU, Manli, LEE, Dik Lun
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2002
• Subjects: Databases and Information Systems; Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/1063
• Institution: Singapore Management University

A wireless environment has both benefits and limitations when it is used as a medium for information access and dissemination. In a wireless environment, we can access to not only information anytime and anywhere as if we were connected to the Internet but information tailored to our particular needs depending on where we are located. This leads to location-dependent information services (e.g., querying for local traffic, restaurants, etc.). The capability of the system is also enhanced by the fact that genuine broadcast (as opposed to multicast) can be realized in a wireless environment, making massive broadcast of commonly requested data a simple and inexpensive task. On the other hand, we have to overcome a lot of limitations such as the limited bandwidth, high-cost of data transmission (both in terms of power consumption on the client devices and system bandwidth) . In this paper, we give an overview of our research in this area. We then discuss our recent work on query processing in location-dependent information services and outline our future research.