Middleware: Leveraging Mobile Communications for Road Safety and Congestion Relief

Middleware has emerged as an important architectural component in supporting distributed applications. The role of middleware is to present a unified programming model to application writers and to mask out problems of heterogeneity and distribution. This paper is motivated by the convergence of the embedded sensor and mobile communication revolutions in the automobile. The national vehicle fleet is morphing into a vast mobile sensor fleet. In this paper, we provide a middleware architecture and implementation that addresses the needs of a distributed system of mobile sensors comprised of vehicles and intersections producing traffic related data for traffic safety and operations. We conclude our paper with some performance measures that relate to the cost of overhead incurred from using the middleware. The measurements show the middleware is efficient enough for certain road safety and congestion relief applications.