A Unified Distributed Computing Framework with Mobile Multi-Agent Systems and Virtual Machines for Large-Scale Applications: From the Internet-of-Things to Sensor Clouds

Abstract

A novel and unified design approach for reliable distributed and parallel data processing in wide-area and large- scale networks consisting of high- and of low-resource nodes (ranging from generic computers to microchips) using mobile agents is introduced. The development of sensor clouds of the future integrated in daily use computing environments and the Internet is enabled. Agents can migrate between different hard- ware and software platforms by migrating the program code of the agent, embedding the state and the data of an agent, too. Agent mobility crossing different execution platforms, agent in- teraction by using tuple-space databases, and agent code recon- figuration enable the design of reliable distributed sensor and information processing networks. The Agent Processing Plat- form exists in hardware (microchip level), software (embedded system), and simulation. This works adds a JavaScript im- plementation including client-side browser applications. All im- plementations are compatibility on operational and commu- nication level. A graph-linked multi-broker service and a distri- buted co-ordination layer are established for this platform class to provide service ports and the access of the agent platform from the outside in browser applications, which can usually only act as clients and are usually hidden by a private network and firewalls.