Mobile Devices as an Extension to the Wireless Infrastructure

Current capabilities of mobile handheld devices introduce them to new roles that were not possible less than a few years ago. In this paper, we look at personal mobile devices as an extension to the wireless infrastructure in environments that lack complete infrastructure coverage. We discuss various roles that these devices can play, starting with setting the devices as Internet relays that provide access to other devices not in range of the infrastructure access points. We then investigate server-like functionalities, in which the devices act as communication proxies or information caches in subnets disconnected from the rest of the network. We describe in detail the system architecture and an experimental implementation of these functionalities focusing on the practical issues of building the collective system.