Mobility Support with a Mobile Agent System

This paper describes the first results and the architectural design decisions of the AMASE project, which addresses the agent technology task of the ACTS third call. The main research interest of the project is to provide the user mobility as a benefit of a mobile agent system. Therefore, the focus in this paper is on the design of a mobile agent system and its environment that meets the demand of high mobility in heterogeneous wireless and fixed networks. We propose a modular agent system to support adaptation and scaling of the system to different devices and network environments. Mobile agents are suitable excellently to realize the user mobility with their capability to operate disconnected. Additional components like an agent launcher and an agent directory are necessary to ensure the autonomous work of mobile agents. First measurements done within a testbed of such a mobile agent system stress the feasibility of the proposed architecture.