Mobile-to-Grid Middleware: Bridging the Gap between Mobile and Grid Environments

Abstract. Currently, access to Grid services is limited to resourceful devices such as desktop PCs but most mobile devices (with wireless net-work connections) cannot access the Grid network directly because of their resource limitations. Yet, extending the potential of the Grid to a wider audience promises increase in flexible usage and productivity. In this paper we present a middleware architecture1 that addresses the is-sues of job delegation to a Grid service, support for offline processing, se-cure communication, interaction with heterogeneous mobile devices and presentation of results formatted in accordance with the device specifica-tion. This is achieved by outsourcing the resource intensive tasks from the mobile device to the middleware. We also demonstrate through formal modeling using Petri nets that the addition of such a middleware causes minimum overhead and the benefits obtained outweigh this overhead.