Mobile computing is one of the most important areas in today’s computing world. Anything mobile, having the computing capabilities is considered in this field of computer science.  It has grown in many areas of this dynamic business world by accomplishing more critical real time transactions within a matter of second, more often it gives the entire worlds’ operation on people’s finger-tips while they are on the move. The involvement of the mobile computing systems in coupling the entire world to an easily reachable area of palm, even when its agents are in the move, is tremendous and vital.

Wearable computer, Personal Digital Assistance (PDA), Enterprise Digital Assistance, Mobile Phone, Smartphone, Carputer and UMPC (Ultra-Mobile PC) are some of the categories of mobile computing devices. Even though the capabilities of these devices in isolation are some times confined to a very limited framework (e.g: Digital Calculator as a mobile device), they are very much important and wider in its strength of operations when they are being part of a network of information. Thus the connectivity technologies within those mobile devices has gain more attention of the specialized computer and electro-mechanical scientists in today’s computing paradigm.

Mobile computing applications have been spread in all over the world in a variety of fields with different interests. Therefore this broad area of computing has to be concerned in several different forms. Some of them are Mobile Ad-Hoc networks, Mobile Communications, Mobile Development, Mobile Software, Mobileers and Ubiquitous Computing. Exploring mobile computing is far wider than that in stationary computing systems due to the fact that it can be considered as a super set of stationary. Thus the dimensions of mobility have focused on those added elements that are outside of the stationary computing subset. These dimensions of mobility are as follows:

Dimensions of mobility

There are four pieces to the mobile problem: the mobile user, the mobile device, the mobile application, and the mobile network. Not only these but also the context can be expanded to focus on very specialized areas of computing such as mobile wireless sensor networks (WSN). With the plethora of wireless technologies, the mobile computing is often encompasses with the wireless connectivity while opening its gateway to the internet thus featuring “Always Connected”.

A timeline of mobile computing

One of the very first computing machines, the abacus, which was used as far back as 500 B.C., was, in effect, a mobile computing system because of its small size and portability. As technology progressed, the abacus evolved into the modern calculator. Most calculators today are made with an entire slew of mathematical functions while retaining their small size and portability.

A mobile computing system, as with any other type of computing system, can be connected to a network. Connectivity to the network, however, is not a prerequisite for being a mobile computing system. Although wired networks remain the predominant method of connecting computers together, they are somewhat cumbersome for connecting mobile computing devices. This is where the wireless communication systems come to the rescue.

Wireless Communication Systems

Several benchmarks in wireless communication systems:

In many fields of work, the ability to keep on the move is vital in order to utilize time efficiently. The importance of Mobile Computers has been highlighted in many fields of which a few are mentioned below:

With the rapid technological advancements in Artificial Intelligence, Integrated Circuitry and increases in Computer Processor speeds, the future of mobile computing looks increasingly exciting. Use of Artificial Intelligence may allow mobile units to be the ultimate in personal secretaries, which can receive emails and paging messages, understand what they are about, and change the individuals’ personal schedule according to the message. This can then be checked by the individual to plan his/her day.

This scary concept of a world full of inanimate zombies sitting, locked to their mobile stations, accessing every sphere of their lives via the computer screen becomes ever more real as technology, especially in the field of mobile data communications, rapidly improves and, as shown below, trends are very much towards ubiquitous or mobile computing.

1. Location awareness,
2. Network connectivity quality of service (QOS),
3. Limited device capabilities (particularly storage and CPU),
4. Limited power supply,
5. Support for a wide variety of user interfaces,
6. Platform proliferation, and
7. Active transactions.
   • Wireless communication through line of sight: 1960 by military
   • Communication satellites: 1970 commercialized
   • Cellular telephony technologies became commercially : 1980
   • Emergency Services
   • Stock Information Collation/Control>
   • Credit card verification
   • Taxi/Truck Dispatch
   • Elecronoc mail/pagging
   • Telephony service
   • Enterprise Relationship Management

Mobile Computing Evolution

One of the main rapidly growing areas of software development can be named as mobile developments. Programming PDAs, EDAs, Handheld devices, mobile phones, smart phones, smartcards and some other specialized mobile embedded devices are considered to be the mobile developments. Most of the current mobile applications are commonly interacted with the Internet/LAN/WAN or a Wireless Service provider network by utilizing the high performance wireless networking achievements. A diverse of specialized programming architectures has been introduced for almost all the categories of mobile devices to be programmed easily and efficiently. Few of those most famous mobile programming languages are:

Mobile software is designed to run on mobile devices. Since the first handheld computers of the 1980s, the popularity of these platforms has risen considerably. Recent model cell phones have included the ability to run user-installed software.

J2ME

Java 2, Micro Edition (J2ME) is designed for small computing devices with a limited processor power and small memory size. It runs atop a Virtual Machine (called the KVM) which allows reasonable, but not complete, access to the functionality of the underlying phone. J2ME devices are considered in to categories and families.

A category defines a particular kind of device;

–cellular telephones, simple pagers, simple personal organizers

A family of devices is made up of a group of categories that have similar requirements for memory and processing power.

–Above set of devices are in “small-footprint” family of devices.

Symbian

The Symbian operating system is not a single operating system, but it exists in a number of versions and variants. There exist the Symbian OS 6, 7, 8 and 9. Each operating system exists in different profiles. This OS is based on a modular, layered, micro-kernel approach. Symbian devices are mainly programming in a stripped down version of C++.

Windows Mobile

Windows Mobile is a compact operating system combined with a suite of basic applications for mobile devices based on the Microsoft Win32 API. Windows Mobile has been updated several times, with the current version being Windows Mobile 6.1, and a new release scheduled for 2009. These devices are normally programmed in .NET, C# or in C++.

Mobile Components

As mentioned in the introduction section the mobile computing can be decomposed into several main areas such as Mobile Ad-Hoc, Mobile Wireless Sensor networks, Mobile Ubiquitous Networks and Enterprise/Commercial Cellular Networks.

Mobile Ad-Hoc (MANET)

MANET is a kind of wireless ad hoc network, and is a self-configuring network of mobile routers/nodes connected by wireless links – the union of which form an arbitrary/dynamic networking topology. The nodes are free to move randomly and organize themselves arbitrarily; thus, the network's wireless topology may change rapidly and unpredictably.

Mobile Wireless Sensor networks (Mobile WSN)

Mobile WSN is a super set of the wireless sensor network, and is enabling the real-time exchange of information interested in the WSN on the move. Sense, Compute while moving has revealed many application areas in computing thus introducing easy ways for environmental monitoring, infrastructure developments, habitat monitoring and animal tracking like limited/restricted human interacted fields.

Mobile Ubiquitous Networks

The phenomenal growth of those mobile computing devices, together with current trends in embedded systems and software, real-time interaction and omnipresent wireless networking fertilises the formation of a Ubiquitous Computing landscape, in which digital environments are aware of the presence of users, sensitive, adaptive and responsive to the users needs, habits and emotions and ubiquitously accessible for the user via natural interaction.

Enterprise/Commercial Cellular Networks

Commercial or cooperate cellular networks has risen up its popularity everywhere in the society. Many cooperate cellular solutions has provided to large business corporations while the global/local cellular network facilities were made available to everyone in the vicinity of the underline service providers network. Thus many mobile applications are developing with the interaction to the enterprise networks (mobile/stationary) and the common cellular network available to everywhere in always connected manner.

The aforementioned content explains you “what is mobile computing?” and its possible specialized areas. With the intervention of wireless networking strategies the entire world has coupled together as a cumulation of mobile and stationary computing. Thus even though the wireless is not a must for mobile computing, it is always considered with. In the future, mobile computing would offer you many advantages by making all your home appliances and other environmental organs a part of mobile computing network thus reaching the entire world in a matter of very short time while you are on the move.