| The vision of pervasive computing is quickly becoming a reality. Unfortunately, the range of applications supported by devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), digital watches, and iPod-like devices remains somewhat limited. Many current efforts promise to support services such as web browsing, personal file management, and peer content exchange on these devices. However, supporting these kinds of content-driven applications in the next-generation computing environment promises to be a challenge. Most pervasive devices are constrained with respect to resources such as bandwidth, processing power, disk space, energy supply, and even display capabilities. These constraints often render traditional technical solutions insufficient for supporting functionality such as content location, delivery, and display. In order to evolve current applications to meet the changing demands and limitations of next-generation computing environments, these challenges must be addressed.; The goal of this dissertation is to develop system-level techniques to overcome resource constraints that restrict the use of pervasive devices for content-driven applications such as web browsing and peer content exchange. In particular, we focus on enabling three subfunctions of content-driven applications: content access, content management, and content exchange. First, we describe a technique to enable content access on devices with limited display capabilities. Second, we describe a technique to enable management of personal content in a power-constrained environment. Finally, we describe a technique that enables new services and improved performance in peer-style content exchange networks. This set of techniques represents a stepping stone in the evolution from the current computing environment to the next-generation, pervasive computing environment. |
