LOCATION-ORIENTED MULTIMEDIA

Location-oriented multimedia describes the integration of location-awa reness technology and mobile multimedia applications. Application mobi lity is targeted at users rather than hosts. Since much complex execut ion and user interface state is set up in the course of application se ssions, it is useful to be able to retain this transparently after mov ing an application. Distributed multimedia complicates this problem si nce many users can be involved, each with distributed media sources an d sinks connected to one another. These communication channels must he reestablished after movement. The authors first present a flexible fr amework, the components of which provide the building blocks for a wid e range of location-oriented application support architectures. The is sues of location awareness, use of mobile agents, mobile multimedia en dpoints, mobile object location, and communication systems are address ed. Second, the authors present a specific architecture that integrate s these components to support location-oriented multimedia. In this ar chitecture, mobile agents are used as controllers of multimedia sessio ns. The mobile agent system has been made location-aware so that appli cations can move to user locations and even follow users. Mobile multi media endpoints support the reestablishment of distributed multimedia streams after movement.