Performance evaluation of a mobile agent-based platform for ubiquitous service provision

The Virtual Home Environment (VHE) is a very important mechanism in the upcoming mobile telecommunications infrastructure, providing a ubiquitous approach in the delivery of services. The universality of systems like UMTS and WLANs increases the need for efficient introduction of VHE. In this paper, we discuss the adoption of Mobile Agents (MA) for coping with the VHE technical challenges. We present the detailed design of an integrated, open and extensible architecture, by taking into account a variety of use cases and technical alternatives (mobile devices, fixed terminals). Relevant implementations are presented to indicate the feasibility of the technical orientation discussed. Finally, we study and compare the performance of the proposed agent based framework with a conventional solution.