Integrating mobile agent infrastructures with CORBA-based distributed multimedia applications

The increased computing power and the enhanced connectivity of current open computing systems are encouraging the deployment of new classes of services both centered around dynamically changing user requirements and based on the exploitation of the Internet infrastructure. Distributed Multimedia Applications (DMAs) are a typical class of services with challenging requirements in terms of resource demand, dynamicity and QoS adaptation. The paper claims that distributed objects and mobile agents can complement each other to provide a flexible middleware for DMAs, and describes the case study of MADAMA (Mobile Agent-based Distributed Architecture for Multimedia Applications). MADAMA adopts mobile agents to simplify the distribution of service control and to provide location-aware adaptability. In addition, MADAMA is compliant with CORBA to achieve large accessibility and interoperability.