Peer-to-Peer Communication Approach for a Mobile Environment.

Abstract

In this paper an approach to the peer-to-peer communication in a mobile environment is presented. This approach is based on the concept of personal trusted device that constantly monitors its neighborhood and collects information for the use of different applications. The reference implementation is built on top of iPaq PDAs running the Linux operating system. Class diagrams are presented for the main elements of the environment and the properties of the prototype are presented. Although this approach is not limited to any particular communication technology only Bluetooth technology is considered and presented in this paper.

Full text

Peer-to-peer Communication Approach for a Mobile Environment
Jari Porras, Petri Hiirsalmi and Ari Valtaoja
Lappeenranta University of Technology
P.O. Box 20
53851 Lappeenranta
Finland
{Jari.Porras, Petri.Hiirsalmi, Ari.Valtaoja@lut.fi}
In this paper an approach to the peer-to-peer
communication in a mobile environment is presented.
This approach is based on the concept of personal
trusted device that constantly monitors its
neighborhood and collects information for the use of
different applications. The reference implementation
is built on top of iPaq PDAs running the Linux
operating system. Class diagrams are presented for
the main elements of the environment and the
properties of the prototype are presented. Although
this approach is not limited to any particular
communication technology only Bluetooth technology
is considered and presented in this paper.
1 Introduction
The world of digital communications is changing
rapidly. Not only new technologies evolve, but new
communication paradigms and new ways of
combining the existing solutions are created. These
developments will increasingly affect the users as
they will use new services through some new device
using some new communication technology. In the
following subsections some of these changes are
discussed.
For the last decade the mobile phones and personal
digital assistant (PDA) devices have satisfied
different needs. Mobile phones have been used
mainly for the communication purposes whereas
PDA devices have contained applications merely
capable of information storage and modification. The
recent developments in technology have brought
these devices closer to each other. As new services
evolve the properties traditionally available in PDA
devices need to be implemented into the mobile
phones. This will eventually lead to a situation where
only one so called Personal Trusted Device (PTD) is
sufficient. In this paper both mobile phones and
PDAs are referred as personal trusted device that is
used for all types of services.
New services are not only a reason for the
development of terminals but they may also be
consequences of the development. As terminals
evolve they will enable new service scenarios and
new business models [1]. Positioning and
personalization are seen as examples of the current
trends. In the future the content of a service will
depend increasingly on the location of the terminal as
well as the preferences of the user. Concepts like
body are network (BAN), personal area network
(PAN) and personal network (PN) are likely to be
implemented in the near future [2].
The implementation of the BAN, PAN and PN
approaches is strongly related to the development of
different communication methods and technologies.
Bluetooth, Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN),
General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) and Universal
Mobile Telecommunications Service (UMTS) have
all their own roles in the future of communication.
Due to the limited range, Bluetooth technology seems
to be suitable for local communication purposes [3].
As the locality becomes more important and the
technologies like Bluetooth evolve, the use of peer-
to-peer approach will become more popular.
Currently peer-to-peer approach is limited by the
operation of the fixed network but this will change
when this approach is applied into mobile networks.
Peer-to-peer communication is seen as one of the
most promising communication paradigms of the
future [4, 5] as it allows resource sharing in a flexible
manner. It allows truly dynamic networking [6, 7]
and offers possibilities for the service scenarios of the
future.
Proceedings of the 37th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2004
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This paper presents an approach that combines the
current trends, namely a personal trusted device
centered personal communication environment that is
based on peer-to-peer communication paradigm.
Although this approach is not limited to some
specific communication technology only Bluetooth
technology is considered and presented in this paper.
A reference implementation is built on top of iPaq
PDAs that are used as personal trusted devices.
2 Peer-to-peer Communication
Concept on a Mobile Environment
For peer-to-peer communication in fixed network
there exist several approaches. Three different
approaches, i.e. Napster model, power server model
and CPU power sharing model, are presented in [8].
Unfortunately these approaches do not take
advantage of the mobile environment. There also
exist some approaches to the mobile peer-to-peer
communication [1, 9, 10, 11 and 12]. Unfortunately
they all look the problem from a different angle than
our approach. [1] concentrates on distribution of
information over the mobile peer-to-peer network, [9]
studies authentication, authorization and accounting
(AAA) problems, [10] looks the problem with a
much larger scope and [12] has a different goal.
Closest to our proposal comes [11] where an
approach of virtual device is presented. The Virtual
device idea itself can be considered to work on top of
our environment.
Our approach is based on a hierarchical structure
where the peer-to-peer communication paradigm is
build on top of wireless networks. Our approach
concentrates on a very local peer-to-peer
communications. Thus PAN type of a network
approach is used. The core of our approach is a
personal trusted device, e.g. mobile phone or PDA,
which is considered as an independent element in the
mobile environment. The personal trusted device is
continuously sensing its neighbors in the changing
mobile environment. This changing environment
works as a personal area network for the personal
trusted device and it is called as peer-to-peer
neighborhood, or PeerHood. This idea is presented in
Figure 1 as the cloud of devices around the personal
trusted device.
PeerHood may use different network technologies but
the implementation varies according to the properties
of the selected technology. For example in a
Bluetooth environment the neighborhood contains
only devices that are sensed by the personal trusted
device whereas in a WLAN environment the concept
of neighborhood contains elements within the area of
the same access point. This would implement the idea
of Personal Network as presented in [2]. PeerHood
enables roaming between different network
technologies assuming that the same service is
available through them.
Applications
Network technologies
PeerHood
Middleware modules
Figure 1. Concept of the PeerHood.
In order to take advantage of the PeerHood some
middleware modules, e.g. personalization module,
has been defined on top of the PeerHood. These
modules offer some value adding services for the
applications implemented on the personal trusted
device.
2.1 General Implementation of the
PeerHood
Figure 2 presents the internal structure of a generic
PeerHood implementation. Actual implementations
may vary depending on the target platform’s
characteristics but the principles are the same
anyway. The main objective of the PeerHood is to
know the immediate neighborhood of the personal
trusted device. As the personal trusted device may be
connected by using different network technologies,
the PeerHood needs to consider the special properties
of all those technologies. In order to support multiple
Proceedings of the 37th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2004
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http://www.unik.no/~paalee/research.htm

network technologies the PeerHood architecture is
pluggable. This means that all network related
functionality is isolated into plugins, one for every
network technology. However, in this paper only
Bluetooth technology is considered due to its
simplicity for peer-to-peer communication.
Interface for the middleware modules
Neighborhood
info
Inquiry
Bluetooth WLAN GPRS
Knowledge of the available networks
Service
info
?Ping
SDP
MVM, MFS, ME, ...
Interface for the middleware modules
Neighborhood
info
Inquiry
Bluetooth WLAN GPRS
Knowledge of the available networks
Service
info
?Ping
SDP
MVM, MFS, ME, ...
Figure 2. PeerHood implementation.
As the PeerHood monitors different network
interfaces it collects information concerning the
neighbors. This information may contain elements on
the areas of the devices and their services. These two
types of information are divided into different tables.
•Information of the actual devices is stored
into the Neighborhood info table according
to the inquiry or search procedure. This
information is updated by using separate
monitor or ping function. The neighborhood
information table should contain the updated
information of the actual neighborhood all
the time.
•Service information is stored into the service
info table. This information is gathered from
the devices in the neighborhood by using
service description function, e.g. Service
Discovery Protocol (SDP) in Bluetooth.
Other approaches may also be considered.
PeerHood offers an interface to the middleware
modules or applications on top of this environment.
This interface offers a set of services to the upper
layers. Applications can utilize the gathered
information by querying the PeerHood tables for
some service they are interested. In addition they can
use PeerHood to receive real-time information about
their present connections.
Figure 3 presents an example of the general behavior
of the PeerHood concept. In this example personal
trusted device with PeerHood client PH_Client_1 is
monitoring its neighborhood and it detects another
device PH_Client_2. This new device is asked if it
supports the PeerHood concept. If so, then this device
is added into the Neighborhood info table and the
available services are queried. The answer is saved
into the Service info table. In this example a Hello
World service is found and this service is used.
Figure 3. Operation example of the PeerHood
concept.
3 Linux Implementation
The first implementation of the PeerHood system was
developed for Compaq iPaqs running the Familiar
Linux distribution. This combination of hardware and
software was chosen because of its great flexibility
and ease of programming using openly available
tools. Figure 4 presents the four main components of
a fully functional Linux implementation and also the
relationships between them. The main components
are: PeerHood Daemon, PeerHood Library,
Additional Components and finally PeerHood
Application. Of these components the daemon and
the library are mandatory for any application to work.
Additional components are optional middleware
libraries that further extend PeerHood’s functionality.
No additional components were developed during the
prototype implementation process.
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Figure 4. The main components of the Linux
implementation.
The most fundamental part of the whole PeerHood
system is the daemon. It has several important
responsibilities including the discovery of other
devices, advertisement of services and resources
available on user’s own device and monitoring the
status of device’s neighborhood. These functionalities
were implemented as a daemon because several
applications might very well use the PeerHood
system simultaneously. As such, there’s no mean to
duplicate heavy and resource consuming operations
like device discovery for each application instance. In
addition, the daemon-based approach enables
applications to receive more up-to-date neighborhood
information because the information is available
immediately when an application is launched.
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Figure 5. The PeerHood Daemon class diagram.
Daemon’s class diagram illustrated in Figure 5 shows
the internal structure of the daemon. As the figure
shows the daemon can use several different
networking technologies via the MAbstractPlugin
and MAbstractConnection interfaces. By using this
approach, new networking technologies can be added
without any modifications to the daemon itself. All
device and service information gathered by the
plugins is inserted to the CDeviceStorage that is
shared between the daemon and all loaded plugins.
The prototype implementation has a plugin for
Bluetooth technology. The plugin is implemented in
classes CBTPlugin and CBTConnection. The
CBTPlugin class is responsible for device discovery
and advertisement while the CBTConnection is used
when the service and resource information is
transferred between devices.
When the Bluetooth plugin is started, it inserts the
PeerHood tag into the device’s SDP database. Other
Bluetooth-enabled PeerHood devices use this tag to
recognize the presence of PeerHood on the device. If
the plugin detects PeerHood on some other device it
sends a query to that device. The other device’s
PeerHood daemon then replies with a list that
contains all the services and resources available on
that device. When the response is received the plugin
inserts the collected data to the CDeviceStorage.
After that, local applications can use the retrieved
data.
If a new PeerHood-capable device is located the
plugin will monitor its presence so that there’s always
accurate information about the nearby devices. In the
prototype plugin the monitoring is implemented so
that the device discovery procedure is ran on periodic
intervals. If a device is not found during three
sequential discoveries it is considered to be out of
range and its information is removed from the
CDeviceStorage.
Data transmission between devices is done by using
the Logical Link and Adaptation Protocol (L2CAP),
which is located right above the Host Controller
Interface (HCI) in the Bluetooth protocol stack
presented in Figure 6. L2CAP was chosen because it
introduces only a small overhead but still offers
ordered and reliable data delivery. The only
drawback is that the maximum packet size is limited
to 673 bytes by default so additional segmentation
and reassembly routines are required in order to
transfer longer data chunks [13]. However, this is
only a minor obstacle. Another possibility would
have been to use TCP/IP but it was rejected because
of the additional overhead introduced by the
underlying RFCOMM, PPP and IP protocols.
Proceedings of the 37th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2004
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Figure 6. The Bluetooth protocol stack [13].
3.1 PeerHood Library
PeerHood applications don’t use the daemon directly.
Instead, they utilize the services provided by the
PeerHood Library. Library’s class diagram is shown
in Figure 7. Just like in the case of the daemon also
the library’s architecture is based on plugins.
Application developers using the PeerHood library
see only the MPeerHood interface that contains all
the functions they can use when coding their own
applications. Possible additional components will
also use the same interface.
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Figure 7. PeerHood library’s class diagram.
Like the daemon also the library is totally transparent
for the underlying networking technology i.e. it can
use any technology as long as the corresponding
plugin is provided. The library is abstracted from the
real hardware interfaces by using pure virtual
interfaces MAbstractCreator and
MAbstractConnection that completely hide all the
technology dependent functionality.
MAbstractCreators are used to create
MAbstractConnection derived objects that are related
to some concrete networking technology. Just like in
the daemon side the MAbstractConnection interface
defines a set of functions that can be used when
communicating over some real networking medium.
During the prototype implementation these interfaces
were realized for Bluetooth.
Whenever a PeerHood-capable device is found by the
plugin it is assigned a tag that explains the
networking technology that can be used when
communicating with the device. If the application
wishes to connect to that device it calls the PeerHood
library. The library extracts the tag and gives it to the
static Factory object that returns a
MAbstractConnection object created by the
MAbstractCreator that recognizes the tag. In the case
of Bluetooth the tag is “bt-base” while for Wireless
LAN it could be e.g. “ph-wlan”. The application can
use the returned MAbstractConnection object to
communicate with the remote device.
3.2 PeerHood Interface
The main interface, MPeerHood, offers a set of
functions that enable communication between
applications and the PeerHood system. In this section
some of the most important functions are described in
more detail. These functions include e.g. the
following (function parameters are omitted):
•bool Init();
Initializes the PeerHood instance. In short,
these initialization routines include
connection establishment between the
library and the daemon.
•TDeviceList* GetDeviceListL();
Gets a list containing all nearby devices and
their shared services and resources.
•MAbstractConnection* ConnectL();
Creates a connection to another PeerHood
capable device. The connection endpoint is
either the device itself or a shared service or
resource located on the device.
•bool RegisterService();
Registers a local service so that other
PeerHood capable devices can find and use
it.
•bool UnregisterService();
Unregisters a previously registered service.
•bool MonitorDevice();
Sets a device under constant monitoring. If a
change (out of range, back in range) takes
place then the application is informed.
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•bool UnmonitorDevice();
Stops the monitoring of a device.
•void SetPreferredPlugin();
Sets the plugin preferred by the application.
This means that PeerHood will try to use the
given plugin whenever possible. In practice,
this call makes it possible to select the
preferred networking technology by
selecting the correct plugin.
Applications can use the functionality behind the
PeerHood system just like any other library without
any special knowledge of the underlying network etc.
Listing 1 shows a very simple PeerHood application
that prints a list of all nearby devices to the screen
and exits right after that.
Listing 1. A simple PeerHood application.
#include <PeerHood.h>
#include <iostream>
#include <cstdio>
int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
MPeerHood* peerHood =
MPeerHood::GetInstance();
if (!peerHood->Init(argc, argv)) {
std::cerr << “PeerHood initialization
failed!” << std::endl;
return EXIT_FAILURE;
}
TDeviceList* list = peerHood-
>GetDeviceListL();
for (TDeviceIterator i = list->Begin();i
!= list->End();++i) {
std::cout << “Found device “ << (*i)-
>GetName() << std::endl;
}
return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}
3.3 Prototype Status
Currently the prototype implementation exists only
for Linux iPaqs but it will be ported to the Symbian
OS in the near future. The prototype is not totally
finished yet as features like resource (memory,
storage space etc.) sharing are missing. However, the
prototype can well be used for testing and research
purposes even at its current state.
Implemented features include:
•Device discovery
•Service discovery
•Connection establishment
•Data transmission between devices
•Device presence monitoring
Figure 8 shows a typical view of the test application.
The figure illustrates a situation where a couple of
devices with Bluetooth are detected and one of them
(00:02:C7:0B:9C:02) has PeerHood enabled. The
device offer a Chat service to other devices. Simply
double-clicking the corresponding service name
would connect to the service.
Figure 8. PeerHood test application.
4 Conclusions
In this paper an approach for peer-to-peer capable
mobile communication environment was presented.
This environment was based on a concept of personal
trusted device and its operation on some very local
communication environment (peer-to-peer
neighborhood). In this early stage of the research the
paper was focused on the design aspects of the
environment and thus no performance results were
presented. However, this concept was implemented
by using mobile devices (iPaqs) with Bluetooth
capability. The implementation was restricted to the
Bluetooth communication technology as it allows
limited neighborhood sizes. According to the
implementation design and the actual implementation
the mobile peer-to-peer neighborhood is a viable
approach for the future communication. Other
networking technologies than Bluetooth can be easily
added to the concept and the use of PeerHood is quite
flexible.
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