Abstract
Pervasive computing enables people to use daily objects surrounding them. How to look up and access these daily objects in such an environment is an important problem. In this thesis, we use a peer-to-peer model to abstract the activities involved in looking up and accessing the services provided by daily objects in a pervasive computing environment. Since objects and services in a pervasive computing environment can often be classified according to certain attributes, e.g., location, service type, quality, etc., we use the notion of “peer domain” to abstract a group of objects or services that have a common attribute. Thus, for example, all devices in a room form a peer domain. A “peer domain” can be realized as a peer-to-peer network, which consists of a decentralized and self-organizing network of autonomous, mobile devices that interact as peers. Under such a model, there are a number of issues needed to be addressed. First, when a new device enters a room, how it can find the corresponding peer domains and join them? Second, how can a device look up the services provided by a peer domain and access them? Third, when a device moves to a new peer domain, how it can hand off the required service? In this thesis, we develop a middleware service to address these issues. We will describe how the middleware is implemented and a media jukebox application is then described to demonstrate the use of our middleware.