Efficient Data Access for Location-Dependent Spatial Queries

Abstract

When the mobile environment consists of light-weight devices, the loss of network connectivity and scarce resources, e.g., low battery power and limited memory, become primary issues of concern in order to efficiently support portable wireless devices. In this paper, we propose an index-based peer-to-peer data access method that uses a new Hierarchical Location-Based Sequential (HLBS) index. We then propose a novel distributed Nearest First Broadcast (NFB) algorithm. Both HLBS and NFB are specifically designed for mobile peer-to-peer service in wireless broadcast environments. The system has a lower response time, because the client only contacts a qualified service provider by accessing the HLBS and quickly retrieves the data to answer the query by using NFB. HLBS and NFB design the index for spatial objects according to the positions of individual clients and transfer the index in the order arranged so that the spatial query can be processed even after the user tunes the partial index. Hence, this design can support rapid and energy-efficient service. A performance evaluation is conducted to compare the proposed algorithms with algorithms based on R-tree and Hilbert-curve air indexes. The results show that the proposed data dissemination algorithm with the HLBS index is scalable and energy efficient in both range queries and nearest neighbor queries.