This document discusses mobile systems engineering and provides an overview of mobile devices, operating systems, and applications. It describes the evolution of computing from early computers to smartphones and defines key aspects of mobile systems including their portability, battery power, wireless connectivity, and associated constraints and characteristics compared to desktop and embedded systems. Examples of mobile applications and system architectures are provided. Popular mobile platforms like Android, iOS, Blackberry and Windows Mobile are compared in terms of their features, programming languages, and development tools.

1. Mobile Systems
Engineering
1. Introduction

2. Topics
Introduction to Mobile Systems
Mobile Systems vs Wireless Systems vs
Embedded Systems
Mobile Applications
Syllabus, Evaluation and Class Policies

3. Evolution of the Computing
Paradigm

4. Evolution of the Computing
Paradigm
1.Early computers 2.Punch cards 3.Command
Line
4. First PC 5. SmartPhone

5. Evolution of the Computing
Paradigm

6. Evolution of the Computing
Paradigm

7. Mobile Devices
Smartphones
Tablets
Netbooks
Laptops
E-book readers
PDAs

8. Mobile Devices
The Players:
Google’s Android
Apple’s iPhone
RIM
Microsoft
Nokia
Palm

9. What is different about
Mobile Computing??
Is it same as Embedded computing?
Is it a special case of Embedded computing?
Is it just Wireless communications?

10. Mobile Systems in
perspective
• Mobile Systems = Wireless communication + Computing
• Wireless Communication
- Is a distinguishing aspect of mobile systems – without wireless, mobile systems
can’t communicate (voice or data). Imagine a cell phone without wireless.
- Wireless communication is used between fixed devices also that need not
necessarily be mobile. For example, home networking where a TV (non mobile
device), Audio system (non- mobile), laptop (mobile), Desktop (non mobile),
Washing machine etc may be networked.

11. Embedded Systems
- Specialized for the application it caters to as against being general purpose, Often resour
(CPU power, memory etc) constrained, characterized by special hardware and
associated system software
Need not be mobile and hence may have wired connectivity (eg printer/scanner using
a USB)

12. Mobile Systems in
perspective
Applications
1. Mobile centric applications – those specialized for mobile scenarios – for
example, location dependent services, cell phone telephony based services
2.Applications that may be classified as personal and micro applications – for
example, applications that assist in personal finance management, personal
diary etc
3. Application architectures specialized for mobile – mobile application
design patterns. For example, consider the intersection of cloud and a mobile
device where the cloud serves as a backup medium to store data from the
mobile device. Another example is that complex computations can be
offloaded to cloud, while the rich multimedia capabilities of Smartphones/
Tablets can be leveraged to provide a rich user experience to the client
applications

13. Characteristics of a Mobile
System
Portable: Mobile systems can be carried (In this discussion we
consider the devices that are carried by people and exclude
devices such as Robots or missiles that can move without
needing to carried by humans)
- Weight, size, form factor, heat dissipation
- Resource constraints
Battery Powered : (This discussion is focused on devices that
are portable and have a battery that is portable as against car
batteries that are huge)
- System software to control energy optimization
- Processor support for energy optimization
- Application architecture driven optimization
- Optimization in communication systems

14. Characteristics of a Mobile
System
Wireless connected
- Different protocols result in different speeds (hence
different power
requirements), different error rates or reliability and
routing
requirements
Limitations:
Bandwidth: Insufficient bandwidth and hence mobile
internet access is generally slower than wired access
Security: Dependency on public networks
Power consumption: Dependent on battery
Transmission interferences: Terrain,Weather..

15. Why Mobile Applications?
Most computers will be portable
Need to access network – need wireless
Many people will be mobile
Consider air travellers inside an aircraft. This is an example
of a mobile network moving at high speed above the ground
– wireless communication is the only mode of data
communication.
User Mobility: Refers to a user who has access to same or
similar telecommunication services at different places –
services follow the user
Device Portability: The communication device moves
(with or without the user). Many mechanisms in the network
inside and outside the device need to make sure that the
communication is still possible while on the move.
The term wireless is used with regard to the devices. This
only refers to a way of accessing the network or other
communication partners – transmission of electromagnetic

16. Communication Patterns
Wireless networking and mobile computing
are related but not identical
Fixed and Wired
Eg Desktop
Mobile and Wired
Eg, laptops carried from one room to
another and connected to wired network
Fixed and Wireless
Eg, printers connected through wireless,
Washing machines that can be
connected through
wireless
Mobile and Wireless

17. Applications
Vehicles
Nomadic user
Smart mobile phone
Invisible computing
Wearable computing
Intelligent house or office
Meeting room/conference
Taxi/Police/Fire squad fleet
Service worker
Lonely wolf
Disaster relief and Disaster alarm
Games

18. Scope of Mobile Systems

20. Application Architecture
Work within constraints
- Design Patterns that handle the constraints effectively
- Constraints in CPU speed, memory, persistent storage,
network speed,
network reliability, power consumption, screen size,
input methods
- Push versus pull to handle transmission power, Use the
wake_lock
effectively, move heavy computation to the server, use
the local database effectively to handle network unreliability,
backup of device data on server, integration of cloud and device,
content adaptation,
- Perform the right trade offs in building applications
Take advantage of devices
- Devices: Camera, GPS, Compos, Accelerometer,
Audio/Speaker/microphone
- New gestures as input/output (eg: multitouch, accelerometer)
- New class of applications (mobile video conferencing,
connectivity to social

21. System Architecture
System
Handle constraints: Bionic library (as against a complete libc
– make a
measurement of bionic size versus full libc size), utilities
and tools that are subset of Linux, DVM to effectively use
memory/power, Power management, Network management to
take care of reliability and low bandwidth aspects
Support new devices: Consistent model for accessing
devices, system
guarantees on availability of devices, Interfaces between
devices, libraries and applications, device specific events (eg,
camera_ready)
Support different wireless protocols
Support detection of mobility and changes to the
environment

22. Mobile Operating System

...also known as MobileOS, Handheld OS or
Mobile Platform, is the operating system
that controls a mobile device.

Why do we need a mobile OS?

How do current mobile OSs compare?

23. Demands from a Mobile OS

Short start-up time

Quick response to user actions

Portable

Power efficient

Extensible

24. Characteristics of a Mobile
OS

Multitasking system – ability to run multiple
applications simultaneously, respond to
asynchronous events

Memory protection – secure environment
for running applications without
compromising user privacy and data
security

Power conscious

Extensible – can run third party
applications

Support for wide variety of communication

25. Comparison of Mobile
Platforms
Multi-ta
sking
Java
support
Flash
support
Browser License
Android Yes Yes Yes WebKit Open
source
Blackberry Yes Yes Yes Proprietary Proprietary
iPhone Yes No No WebKit Semi-propr
ietary
WinMobile Yes Yes Yes IE Proprietary
, with
partial
sources

26. Comparison of Mobile Platforms -
Development Tools
Primary
language(s)
Debugger IDE Availability
Android Java
(limited C/C++)
ADT
Eclipse
plugin
ADT
Eclipse
plugin
Free
Blackberry Java Integrated
in JDE
JDE Free
iPhone Objective-C Integrated
in XCode
IDE
XCode Free on
Intel-Mac,
fee-based
deployment
WinMobile C/C++, C#,
VB.Net
Yes Visual
Studio,
eVC++
Commercial
(Visual
Studio), free
(eVC++)