Compressibility of WML and WMLScript byte code: initial results [Wireless Mark-up Language]

The rapid technical development of wireless cellular networks and the strong proliferation of hand-held mobile terminals among users, on the one hand, and the development of Internet technologies, on the other hand, have made evident the need to combine these technologies. In 1997, an industry-driven organization called the WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) Forum was established to develop technical standards that bridge the gap between the mobile telephone networks and the World Wide Web. The first version (1.0) of the WAP standard was accepted by the Forum in April 1998, and the current version (1.1) in June 1999. Version 1.2 is now being developed. Mobile terminals are small in size, have a relatively small memory and processor capacity, and have small batteries. The wireless bandwidth in GSM and other similar second-generation networks is also rather limited as compared to wire-line networks, ranging from 9.6 to /spl sim/170 kbps. In this paper, we examine how much the byte codes used in the WAP environment can be compressed and whether the reduced transmission time of the application data warrants the increased memory and processor overhead caused by the compression and decompression.