Pervasive computing implies the invisibility of the technology involved in providing ubiquity, such that technology is integrated into the environment and non-intrusive. In such a manner, computing and networking resources become diffused into physical environments, enabling users to exploit their provided functionalities such that functionality is distributed, enabling it to be controlled, monitored, managed, and extended beyond what it was initially designed to do. Moreover, computer awareness moves towards user-centricity, whereby systems seamlessly adapt to the characteristics, preferences, and current situations of users and their respective surrounding environments. Users exploit such functionalities in the form of a virtual device, whereby a collection of heterogeneous devices in the vicinity of the user are behaving as one single homogeneous device for the benefit of the user in solving some given task. This dissertation investigates the problem of dynamic composition and management of virtual devices for ad hoc multimedia service delivery and proposes an autonomous policy driven framework for virtual device management. The framework consists of a hierarchical structure of distributed elements, including autonomic elements, all working towards the self-management of virtual devices. The research presented in this dissertation addresses the functionalities of these components. More specifically, contributions are made towards the autonomous management of virtual devices, moving away from infrastructure based schemes with heavy user involvement to decentralized and zero touch (i.e., no user involvement) solutions. In doing so, the components and methodology behind a policy-driven autonomous framework for the dynamic discovery, selection, and composition of multimodal multi-device services are presented. The framework operates in an ad hoc network setting and introduces a Service Overlay Network (SON) based definition of a virtual device. Furthermore, device and service discovery, composition, integration, and adaptation schemes are designed for Mobile Ad hoc Network Environments (MANETs) enabling users to generate, on-the-fly, complex strong specific systems, embedding in a distributed manner, QoS models providing compositions that form the best possible virtual device at the time of need. Experimental studies are presented to demonstrate the performance of the proposed schemes.

Pervasive computing implies the invisibility of the technology involved in providing ubiquity, such that technology is integrated into the environment and non-intrusive. In such a manner, computing and networking resources become diffused into physical environments, enabling users to exploit their provided functionalities such that functionality is distributed, enabling it to be controlled, monitored, managed, and extended beyond what it was initially designed to do. Moreover, computer awareness moves towards user-centricity, whereby systems seamlessly adapt to the characteristics, preferences, and current situations of users and their respective surrounding environments. Users exploit such functionalities in the form of a virtual device, whereby a collection of heterogeneous devices in the vicinity of the user are behaving as one single homogeneous device for the benefit of the user in solving some given task. This dissertation investigates the problem of dynamic composition and management of virtual devices for ad hoc multimedia service delivery and proposes an autonomous policy driven framework for virtual device management. The framework consists of a hierarchical structure of distributed elements, including autonomic elements, all working towards the self-management of virtual devices. The research presented in this dissertation addresses the functionalities of these components. More specifically, contributions are made towards the autonomous management of virtual devices, moving away from infrastructure based schemes with heavy user involvement to decentralized and zero touch (i.e., no user involvement) solutions. In doing so, the components and methodology behind a policy-driven autonomous framework for the dynamic discovery, selection, and composition of multimodal multi-device services are presented. The framework operates in an ad hoc network setting and introduces a Service Overlay Network (SON) based definition of a virtual device. Furthermore, device and service discovery, composition, integration, and adaptation schemes are designed for Mobile Ad hoc Network Environments (MANETs) enabling users to generate, on-the-fly, complex strong specific systems, embedding in a distributed manner, QoS models providing compositions that form the best possible virtual device at the time of need. Experimental studies are presented to demonstrate the performance of the proposed schemes.

Pervasive computing implies the invisibility of the technology involved in providing ubiquity, such that technology is integrated into the environment and non-intrusive. In such a manner, computing and networking resources become diffused into physical environments, enabling users to exploit their provided functionalities such that functionality is distributed, enabling it to be controlled, monitored, managed, and extended beyond what it was initially designed to do. Moreover, computer awareness moves towards user-centricity, whereby systems seamlessly adapt to the characteristics, preferences, and current situations of users and their respective surrounding environments. Users exploit such functionalities in the form of a virtual device, whereby a collection of heterogeneous devices in the vicinity of the user are behaving as one single homogeneous device for the benefit of the user in solving some given task. This dissertation investigates the problem of dynamic composition and management of virtual devices for ad hoc multimedia service delivery and proposes an autonomous policy driven framework for virtual device management. The framework consists of a hierarchical structure of distributed elements, including autonomic elements, all working towards the self-management of virtual devices. The research presented in this dissertation addresses the functionalities of these components. More specifically, contributions are made towards the autonomous management of virtual devices, moving away from infrastructure based schemes with heavy user involvement to decentralized and zero touch (i.e., no user involvement) solutions. In doing so, the components and methodology behind a policy-driven autonomous framework for the dynamic discovery, selection, and composition of multimodal multi-device services are presented. The framework operates in an ad hoc network setting and introduces a Service Overlay Network (SON) based definition of a virtual device. Furthermore, device and service discovery, composition, integration, and adaptation schemes are designed for Mobile Ad hoc Network Environments (MANETs) enabling users to generate, on-the-fly, complex strong specific systems, embedding in a distributed manner, QoS models providing compositions that form the best possible virtual device at the time of need. Experimental studies are presented to demonstrate the performance of the proposed schemes.

Pervasive computing implies the invisibility of the technology involved in providing ubiquity, such that technology is integrated into the environment and non-intrusive. In such a manner, computing and networking resources become diffused into physical environments, enabling users to exploit their provided functionalities such that functionality is distributed, enabling it to be controlled, monitored, managed, and extended beyond what it was initially designed to do. Moreover, computer awareness moves towards user-centricity, whereby systems seamlessly adapt to the characteristics, preferences, and current situations of users and their respective surrounding environments. Users exploit such functionalities in the form of a virtual device, whereby a collection of heterogeneous devices in the vicinity of the user are behaving as one single homogeneous device for the benefit of the user in solving some given task. This dissertation investigates the problem of dynamic composition and management of virtual devices for ad hoc multimedia service delivery and proposes an autonomous policy driven framework for virtual device management. The framework consists of a hierarchical structure of distributed elements, including autonomic elements, all working towards the self-management of virtual devices. The research presented in this dissertation addresses the functionalities of these components. More specifically, contributions are made towards the autonomous management of virtual devices, moving away from infrastructure based schemes with heavy user involvement to decentralized and zero touch (i.e., no user involvement) solutions. In doing so, the components and methodology behind a policy-driven autonomous framework for the dynamic discovery, selection, and composition of multimodal multi-device services are presented. The framework operates in an ad hoc network setting and introduces a Service Overlay Network (SON) based definition of a virtual device. Furthermore, device and service discovery, composition, integration, and adaptation schemes are designed for Mobile Ad hoc Network Environments (MANETs) enabling users to generate, on-the-fly, complex strong specific systems, embedding in a distributed manner, QoS models providing compositions that form the best possible virtual device at the time of need. Experimental studies are presented to demonstrate the performance of the proposed schemes.

In this dissertation, routing protocols, load-balancing protocols, and efficient evaluation techniques for multi-hop mobile wireless networks are explored. With the advancements made in wireless communication and computer technologies, a new type of mobile wireless network, known as a mobile ad hoc network (MANET), has drawn constant attention. In recent years, several routing protocols for MANETs have been proposed. However, there still remains the need for mechanisms for better scalability support with respect to network size, traffic volume, and mobility. To address this issue, a new method for multi-hop routing in MANETs called Dynamic NIx-Vector Routing (DNVR) is proposed. DNVR has several distinct features compared to other existing on-demand routing protocols, which lead to more stable routes and better scalability. Currently, ad hoc routing protocols lack load-balancing capabilities. Therefore they often fail to provide good service quality, especially in the presence of a large volume of network traffic since the network load concentrates on some nodes, resulting in a highly congested environment. To address this issue, a novel load-balancing technique for ad hoc on-demand routing protocols is proposed. The new method is simple but very effective in achieving load balance and congestion alleviation. In addition, it operates in a completely distributed fashion. To evaluate and verify wireless network protocols effectively, especially to test their scalability properties, scalable and efficient network simulation methods are required. Usually simulation of such large-scale wireless networks needs a long execution time and requires a large amount of computing resources such as powerful CPUs and memory. Traditionally, to cope with this problem, parallel network simulation techniques with parallel computing capabilities have been considered. This dissertation explores a different type of method, which is efficient and can be achieved with a sequential simulation, as well as a parallel and distributed technique for large-scale mobile wireless networks.