A survey on wireless Grid computing

Wireless Grid computing extends the traditional Grid computing paradigm to include a diverse collection of mobile devices enabled to communicate using radio frequency, infrared, optical and other wireless mechanisms. Among the devices coming into use in wireless grid implementations are tiny sensors, Radio Frequency Identification tags (RFID). Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and paging devices, cellular phones, hand-held or wearable computers, laptop computers and special purpose computers embedded into many modern appliances [8, 26, 29]. Though many of these devices were initially developed to serve a specific, autonomous purpose, their potential for cooperation through the sharing of resources and capabilities, and the massive amounts of resources available due to their numbers, is quickly leading to applications resembling traditional Grid computing. This paper presents a survey of the current state of wireless grid computing. This includes a discussion of the cooperation between wired and wireless grids including ways in which wireless grids extend the capabilities of existing wired grids. It also discusses many of the new capabilities and resources available to wireless grid devices and a sampling of several applications of these new resources. It provides a sampling of many current research endeavors in the wireless grid arena and an examination of a number of the potential challenges resulting from the unique characteristics of wireless grid devices.