BASE - a micro-broker-based middleware for pervasive computing

Pervasive computing environments add a multitude of additional devices to our current computing landscapes. Specialized embedded systems provide sensor information about the real world or offer a distinct functionality, e.g. presentation on a "smart wall". Spontaneous networking leads to constantly changing availability of services. This requires middleware support to ease application development. Additionally, we argue that an extensible middleware platform covering small embedded systems to fill-fledged desktop computers is needed. Such a middleware should provide easy-to-use abstractions to access remote services and device-specific capabilities. We present a micro-broker-based approach which meets these requirements by allowing uniform access to device capabilities and services through proxies and the integration of different interoperability protocols. A minimum configuration of the middleware can be executed on embedded systems. Resource-rich execution environments are supported by the extensibility of the middleware.