A service continuity layer for mobile services

The paper presents and discusses models of generic mobile services. The primary goal is to gain understanding of the challenges in designing, developing and deploying advanced mobile data services. Two types of models are introduced. First, a composition model is given, describing the components of a generic mobile service and the component relationships. Second, distribution models are presented, describing the distributions of the components in the first model across hosts, networks and domains. A brief mobility analysis is carried out, followed by a discussion of the dependency of mobility and service continuity on the service distribution. The functions necessary to provide service continuity are identified and incorporated in a service continuity layer.