A Proximity-Based Framework for Mobile Services

Peer-to-peer proximity-based wireless networking can provide improved spatial and temporal semantics and independence over alternative wireless topologies that rely on static network infrastructure, and can potentially enable new classes of mobile applications. However, the difficulties of setting up such ad-hoc connections has thus far been a development barrier. There is currently a need for an abstraction tool to allow application developers to exploit the potential advantages of such networks with minimal knowledge of the underlying connectivity. We present Proxima, a framework for the Android platform, which employs ad-hoc device-to-device connections and proactive mesh routing for a decentralised topology with solely proximity-based rich content dissemination. The framework is designed to be developer- and user-friendly with minimal configuration effort, lightweight, reusable and hardware independent. After compilation, the size of its binary distribution is only 6MB. We have further developed a real-life application, named TuneSpy, based around sharing music with local peers. The development of TuneSpy has produced two positive outcomes. Firstly, it strongly demonstrates the ease of writing proximity-based applications with Proxima. Secondly, it has served as a testing platform for all framework functionality.